


still waters

by summerson



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Character Death, F/F, allusions to self harm, catradora, catradora is endgame and i will die on that hill, every single character is MVP, shadow weaver's a creep, the kids are not ok my dudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2020-09-19 01:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20322616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerson/pseuds/summerson
Summary: Given Adora's shitty luck it seemed kind of inevitable in hindsight, of course she would get bit.orThe Last of Us AU nobody asked for





	1. Summer I (Adora)

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up buttercup cause it's gonna be a bumpy ride

The pitiful irony of it all was that it didn’t even look that bad. Deep as hell and leaking a striking scarlet, but relatively small and clear of any of that sickening green pus. The outlines of the punctures throbbed slightly as Adora squeezed tight around the crease and clenched her teeth, hissing at the faded burning sensation prickling at the edges of the wound and stemming just above at her elbow where the blood flowed free and warm. But to be honest, the bite didn’t even hurt - what with the adrenaline still migrating listlessly through her system it honestly felt like the tingle of careless brush burn, no more painful or unfortunate than a stubbed toe.

Adora seethes out between the grit of her teeth and opens her eyes to assess the weeping injury. She rips back the fabric, leaving no time to let anxiety build as she moves her sleeve back down up the soft press of her forearm. Her gaze is open as she takes in the sight of twin crescent moons peeking out past the ripped cotten smiling up at her. It's bleeding an earnest orange russet red that springs forth in the pooling divets, and Adora squeezes up the length of her arm just above to cut off the blood stream. Offhandedly, Adora noted that it could almost be mistaken for a dog bite, and how it was odd to think that the end of her life would boil down to such an unremarkable inexplicable thing. The sight of it suddenly makes her stomach turn violently. And Adora lets out a choked groan in the back of her throat as she stumbled forward a few feet, bent over her knees, face twisting in revulsion right before she abruptly emptied the contents of her stomach next to the dead clicker, it’s face an unrecognizable bloody mash of pulp.

__________

In the end she'd gone back to The Fireflies - because really, what else was she supposed to do? The thought of just waiting it out, watching her skin turn that sickly grey, feeling her brain slowly rot over with fungus and savage hunger…No. The fireflies would help. End things before it ever got that far. They would help. They _had_ to help. In the distance, she could see the rebel headquarters - windows void of light or activity. And to the untrained or outside eye - abandoned.

Adora knew a that low profile was smart, strategically kept the the H.O.R.D.E dogs from sniffing in all the wrong places. But as she hauled herself over the railing of another catwalk, she vaguely thought the skeletal building appeared morbidly foreboding against the bloody sky. 

Adora gritted her teeth and pushed onwards. Numbing her line of thought to the entire ordeal was the only way she was keeping together. If she stopped to think about it for too long she’d surely break - and she couldn’t let that happen. She had to get back before the fever set in. Before…- she needed to focus. But despite her best efforts her mind wandered sporadically. Jumping from thought to thought in a frenzy of panic. She thought about all the shit she still needed to take care of. All the reports she had to make, all the patrols she had left to rotate, there was a shipment of supplies to take stock of, Light Hope had wanted her up early next morning for training. It was her fucking night to take the garbage out for chrissake. All her plans. And Catra-

"Adora,"

It didn’t matter now.

"Adora?"

None of that would matter now.

"Adora?"

But maybe…

"Adora."

Maybe it could have.

"Adora!"

"Light Hope…"

Light Hope stood tall and stark against the glare of the basement flood light. Leaving Adora to wonder how she managed to look regal in cargos. The shadows cut at her jawline, sharp and stern as her commanding officer peered over her shoulder towards her, papers still grasped in her lowered hand which had no doubt detailed some paramount correspondence. Light Hope's eyes betrayed no emotion, but it didn't stop the prickle of upset that summoned deep within Adora's gut as she entertained the impression that she'd interrupted something important. The image of it chased her sickening thoughts into a faded haze somewhere in the background of her brain. Her soon to be rotting brain...

Not for the first time that night, Adora wished that the clicker had just finished the job there and then.

Morbid thoughts. Morbid events.

Adora blinked and braced against the door frame she was leaning against. Collar gritting down into the wood as her breath puffed out her mouth, and then her nose as she sealed it shut. Through the caphony that had seeped in she could feel her eyes straining a little as she tried to-...to find the right delivery. " Light Hope, I..."

"Adora. What is it?"Light Hope’s voice didn’t coddle or soothe her, but it was solid and familiar, and Adora forced herself to make eye contact with the strict gaze of her mentor. Drag her eyes up and look through the fraying strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail, sweaty and pasted to her forehead in complete disarray. She must look insane.

_It was an accident._

_…_

_I didn’t mean for this._

_…_

_I’m sorry._

She gripped her inner forearm. The bandage she knotted around it already soaked through red and blood trailing down her arm. 

"I got bit."

_Silence_

Then softly…"I got bit."

__________

It didn’t take too long for Adora to piece one and two together. It took Light Hope even less. Two days. Two. And she still had yet to acquire even the slightest of fevers. Not an hour after the sun had set on the 2nd day Light Hope arranged for a Firefly escort to a rebel lab out in Colorado.

__________

Preparing for the journey wasn’t difficult. What little Adora actually owned wasn’t enough to fill up a knapsack let alone a suitcase. Which worked out all the better for everyone; having less just meant less to move. And less to move was always good. Especially given the country wide trek ahead of them. Adora’s leg bounced as she glanced up at Light Hope who stood a league away conversing witha crew of Fireflies and delivering instructions - ever the strategist.

She fiddled with the switchblade in her hands. Thumb dancing on the razor’s edge of one of her only possessions...self consciously, Adora wondered what Mara would think about-

"Adora,"

Light Hope approached as Adora stood at attention. Shoulders erect. Back straight. A soldier's stance...one that Adora had perfected over the years of persistent drilling and countless aching hours at post. The H.O.R.D.E was the first to teach her discipline, something the fireflies treated more as a formality than a mandate...but it's what Adora was bred for. It's in her heritage and in her blood since the day she was put on the earth. It makes it easier to slip into routine and pretend this was just another inspection drill, which all in all helped to quiet her static nerves. But Light Hope, in a surprisingly uncharacteristic gesture of affection, brings her arms up between them in space and places two solid hands on her shoulders. Adora blinked, somewhat at a loss for words and protocol. Because while Light Hope was many things...whatever this was wasn't one of them. Eventually, Adora allows her eyes to uncloud and lock onto the fabric stitch in Light Hope's army jacket as she picks out the green threaded patterns woven so tight and knit...flicker up to her neckline, just below an inevitable gaze. 

It was only when Light Hope's voice sounded did Adora find her permission to glance up and lock onto Light Hope's cloud grey eyes. Stern and steady. The crease and fold over the corners of her eyes, bent and bowed into a dispassionate frown as Adora weathered the silent contemplation. 

"Stay close. Stay calm. And you’ll be at the lab in no time."

Not a very moving speech. But Adora supposed the sentiment was there. She nodded, pocketing the switchblade for safekeeping and silently praying she’d still be alive in an hour. It would be beyond shitty to be immune to a deathly parasitic virus just to be done in by a shot in the the head from some H.O.R.D.E lackey.

"Light Hope," one of the Firefly escorts prompted. "It’s time."

__________

_Adora feels the press of the lieutenant's hand on her shoulder. The fabric's nestled in the collar threads that's brushing up against her ear as she bunches up the muscles in her shoulders, coiled and tensed with static energy jittering under her skin. But she doesn't look up or allow her eyesight to lose its focus - to decenter itself. Just listens..._

_"It's just like training." Close to her ear and sealed tight to her side. Looking out across the expanse she can see the rendezvous...and then the outer wall...._

It had all been so fast.

_She blinks. '"ust like training..."_

_The sound of an ammo clip locking into place._

So sudden.

_"Smooth sailing after this, kid. Don't lose your nerve now."_

She feels sick.

_"Go!"_

** _BANG!_ **

_"Fireflies!"_

_"Cover!"_

Adora's jaw clenches. Teeth grating into each other like grindstones. 

_The fall of a body to her left._

_Her right._

** _BANG!_ **

_The H.O.R.D.E soldier falls to the ground, his brains blown out from the back as his body jerks. Adora's breath keening in and out her lungs as she watches him float in front of her. Prone to the earth on her back clutching a 9mm close to her chest as she watches the red shoot in and straight out the back like flowers. The petals lost to the wind as the smoke and smog fray her vision and disintegrates with the noise that's gone and distorted like a high pitched wail. But so far away..._

_"Get up!'"The lieutenant._

_The panic and claws of adrenaline raking at her chest._

_"Find Light Hope!"-**BANG!**_

Adora lowers her head to the peaks of her knees and alternates her breaths between her mouth and nose. Winnowed and panting, the barest tremble of an unwelcome whine rising from the back of her throat keens out of her in a way she's never produced before now. Part of it catches from the dryness in her throat and Adora's forced to gag and dry heave to the side while she braces the wall she's leaned up against.

The underside of Adora's jaw throbbed as she coughed up acid bile and shut her eyes to the ringing still in her ears. She pries open her eyes and turns her head to gaze at the ease of sunset fade fall down to a close through the window, its final rays of light gleaning in shafts through her misting eyes that have just begun to well from the sting. The building she'd found herself in was in disrepair, an abandoned factory building that was dusted and overgrown. Weeds broken through concrete. Vines trailed up through the snags and brickwork. The resounding sound of machine guns pattering like rain late into the day.

Adora unconsciously presses her thumb down on the switchblade searching for comfort, the thread and fray of her army fatigues grazing up against her skin. She clenches her eyes tight to block it out, until all she can hear in the din of her empty head was the sound of her unrestrained raspy breaths.

"Look, let's just - take a breather alright?-"

"No, no...it's imperative that we get to- Adora!"

Adora's teeth don't unlock from the grit as she continues to pant and seethe, but she does manage to lower the handgun pointed directly at Light Hope's unguarded chest. Wavering a little from the tidal wave that's spun her 360 and two times over in the evening light and shock. She doesn't even feel attached to her limbs. Her body. "Light Hope...?"

Light Hope walks forward, one hand to her blood stained side, another across the length of wall for support as she stutters forward. It's the most disgruntled state Adora's seen her in - bloody and ragged where all the lines don't set and her fatigues don't crease, a harrowing bedraggled state that upsets the frizz of her hair. Adora jerks to meet her halfway shouldering the brunt of weight and propping Light Hope up against a low set table nearby as she begins to inspect the wound that's just beginning to crust and stem. Good. But not ideal.

"Thank God you're..." Light Hope doesn't finish as Adora props up a wayward crate for a footrest, flittering here and there with directed energy that helps conceal the shaking in her hands. Still, Adora can feel the anxiety and worry radiate off of her like a heat wave, out and under her palms that rest on Adora's shoulder. Her brow scrunches up and discerning when her older wisened hand leans up to cup the side of Adora's head, warm and appraising. She could cry.

"...thank God."

Adora can't manage to swallow around the cotton in her throat. "My unit...the lieutenant..." how can she explain?

"I found someone who can help."

Help. Adora's not felt this helpless since her days in the military academy. Back in the H.O.R.D.E where she'd been rendered cold and starving in the dorms with her bloody blistering knuckles and some duct tape. And now with Light Hope as shot through as she was, bleeding out on the table with Adora's hands pressed down into weeping flesh like putty...she doesn't know what help the universe could offer that would make any of this bullshit-

"Hey, Adora."

__________

If anything Scorpia was nice enough. _Even if she didn't know how to shut up._

"Oh! So are you like some big wig’s daughter? Are they taking you to a bigger quarantine zone?"

Adora shifted in the lamplight, praying that the shadows hovered over her discomfort. The rain set to a light splatter against the dark black void in the window. She feels compelled to tap her knee to the rhythmic splatter of raindrops on the panes as Scorpia crowds in with her words, rubbing the fingers of her hand together as her palms begin to sweat. "uh..something like that." She self consciously thumbs the bandage hugging her arm.

"Wow. That’s just great. Me and Catra would love to get out of Boston. I mean, I’ve lived here my entire life. Even before the outbreak I’d always been a Boston gal. You know our hideout where we stash the drugs used to be my aunt’s apartment complex -"

"Scorpia. Focus. Did you see the guns?"Catra’s voice cuts in to Scorpia’s incessant rambling as she snaps and brushes past the older woman to shut the door.

"Yeah, yeah. They’re good for it," she affirms.

"Good. Now let’s go. The sooner we get this job done the sooner I can forget I took it in the first place."

Adora keeps her mouth shut even if she has to bite her tongue to do it. It’s not even what she says but how she says it. Catra had always known how to grate against her nerves like that. So instead of biting back to take the bait Adora silently resents it like a good soldier, and stands to the side while she waits for the smugglers to pack their supplies.

"Don’t mind her. She’s always like that." Scorpia, the good natured soul that she is, nudges Adora as she packs up a carton of bullets. 

"It’s not your fault," Adora responds. Because it's not, she thinks as she eyes Catra from the sidelines. Roiling feelings that border contempt as Catra's arc and her own circumnavigate each other loosely in caution.

There’s a charged scoff and the biting sound of Catra’s disdain. "Ever the moral mascot aren’t you?"

There’s an awkward pause as Scorpia, maybe for the first time that night, doesn’t know what to say. But following a few moments knee deep into the tension she hesitantly ventures "Am…I misreading something here? Do you guys like, know each other or something?"

Another pause.

"Or something." Mumbles Catra, those twin moons never breaking eye contact and leering into Adora’s past. And for a moment, it’s just two quarantine orphans standing on the roof of an outlet mall. The glint of a firefly pendant winking up at them in the fading sunlight.

"Right……well…I’m gonna go start up the generator while you guys….yeah."

Scorpia clears out fairly fast after that and the silence hangs in between them. Charged. Electric...Familiar?

She can't even - _begin_ to understand how Catra - _Catra, _managed to get within even spitting distance of Light Hope. How the vagabond smuggler of yesteryear's nightmares managed to even - the absurdity of the situation was just too godamn sadistic for the universe to conspire. But-...but Adora can't help but be drawn to notice how unchanged she appears from way back when. A little older. A little worse for wear given the circumstances. But the build and set of her shoulders are still sharp and narrow on the slant of shadows and light, tan skin caked thinly in sweat and a misty layer of dirt. She's even still got her hair tied back with that ridiculous red bandana. Stray trendles and fly aways sprouting from the edge and ticking at her neck, sneer drawn back across that familiar snarl. But Adora notes she's still got a half inch on her, because she lifts her chin when she sets her eyes to glare up and down at her with the shine of her eyes. Her eyes, she feels something twist around in her chest and ache from nostolgia when she looks at her eyes, blue and gold and glinting as vibrantly and fiery as the day she left...m ore than ever she feels the urgency to bury the past back where it belongs.

Adora breaks eye contact first, leaning down to grasp the handle of the lantern, her voice flat when she speaks. "Were you always this passive aggressive?"

She can’t do this. She needs to stay focused, and exchanging harsh words and pointing fingers with Catra is an old game Adora can’t afford to play anymore.

"Did you always have that stick up your ass?"

But fuck her Catra isn’t making it easy.

"Wait. Don’t answer that. I already know." Catra turns away abruptly and starts packing up her bag with water bottles and crackers. 

"Classy."

Catra chuckles with the intent to hurt. "You know maybe if you relaxed once in a while it might actually fall out."

"Look. Do you _want _to fight? Because if that’s the case then I can just rendezvous with the Fireflies myself."

Catra looks up from her pack. Elbow resting on her knee and frown plastered on her features. She looks up at Adora for a moment. Mulling over her face for all it was worth. Adora freezes but her face doesn’t waver, it feels like the first time Catra has actually looked at her in forever. Was she taking stock of what had changed over the years as Adora had? It felt oddly reassuring to know that Catra was just as unprepared in all of this as she was. Her face is casted against the glow of the lamp, blue eye leering out of the dark.

Eventually, she responds. "Why are we even escorting you anyway? Since when were you such a hot shot."

It’s a good question. Adora didn’t think Catra would be quick enough to catch it. Because when all was said and done Adora hadn’t been anything more than a foot soldier amongst the Fireflies. Born and bred for leadership maybe but nowhere near important enough at the time to warrant an escort. In any other situation, it would’ve been Adora escorting some big up and comer out of the city.

"Doesn’t your job description usually entail _not_ asking questions?"

"Fuck you."

Scorpia takes that moment to come back from the other room and to her credit only looks slightly uneasy given the electrified atmosphere. "We ready?"

Catra holds her gaze for another heated moment before those double moons flicker away. "Let’s get this over with."

__________

The rain pattered down on the fracturing asphalt and engrossing greenery with little sign of recess. Adora strained her eyes to peer out into the dark watching as the last H.O.R.D.E truck passed overhead and out of sight. Catra splayed crouched a few feet ahead of her, hugging the wall before she dared to lean out from the shadows, neck straining after the trucks as they trundled past outside to the outside.

"Ok. Ok we’re good. Come on."

Catra crawled forward soundlessly, pushing aside a rotting plank as they exited their cover. Adora trailed out behind her, eyeing the path they would take all the way to the rendevous. The thought of their final destination brought forth a slough of hypothetical questions - what happened after this? Adora would go to Colorado to have a vaccine somehow poked and prodded out of her and Catra…Catra would be set for life in ration cards and a pretty pension if the Fireflies could stand by their word. But if something actually came of all this - the vaccine that is…would Catra understand then? Studying the curve of her back in the dark Adora thought better of it.

She shakes the traitorous thoughts away like flies. "We should make a break for it once we get out on the other side," Adora suggests.

Catra interjects. "Bad idea. The caravans have military escorts that walk underneath the road. Better to wait until first light so we can get a handle on their ground patterns."

"Caravan supply patrols follow the trucks in block units. We can avoid getting caught if we shoot across now while there’s an opening."

"Yeah. But they’ve probably changed the rotation schedule since in the last 5 years." Catra’s golden eye flashes at her in the dark. Flinty and hard like a challenge in more ways than one. "We’ve got no idea if they’ll be in blocks, lines, hooks, or fucking wings." Catra lists off the formations like she was actually paying attention during military drills. Despite that Adora only flares brighter, growing increasingly indignant with the set of Catra's jaw that goes rigid and set in the outline of darkness.

"The rendevous is at the capital building. That's a 15 mile shot straight from the zone - _without _detours. If we want to even begin thinking about making it by noon we need to-"

_"This is about your time table!?_ Jesus Adora. We need to be alive to make it to your glorified slumber party-" The hush of Catra's voice bleeds out with the rapid descent of her patience. The tone and swing of her voice pitching up above the shuffling of rain against the concrete barb and storm drain they're hidden in. Adora grits her own teeth and narrows her brows in determination.

"Regardless, if we leg it while it’s still dark there’s a good chance we’ll miss them. That’s something we won’t be able to do if the sun starts bleaching out our cover." It’s solid reasoning that Catra can’t argue with. So Adora watches as she grumbles and trudges forward, mouth forming a thin line while Scorpia does a terrible job of pretending not to hear their discourse. The small party ambles down deeper through the dark and overgrowth until Catra approaches a rusted grate leaned up against a concrete storm drain as tall as a car. "Get in."

Adora eyes the dark as she watches Scorpia crawl in and is lost to the other side, the sound of her footsteps calling out above the patter of rain on her back. She turns to Catra as she steps a single foot in. "You realize I'm right, don't you?"

Catra's lip sneers upwards as she switches on the torch latched onto the shoulder strap of her pack. "Go."

It's bigger on the inside than she thought it'd be. Adora stands up straight at full height, her feet splash hollowly in the small tide of water rippling around her ankles, rainwater and fungus green lapping at the cuff of her pants and soaking through. 

_Ugh...soggy socks._

She turns her head back up and casts her eyes down the length of the tunnel towards the tease of moonlight in the distance. The sound of the grate clanks and shuts behind them and then Catra pushes past with a shouldered shove to the side as she trudges down the length of pipe.

Adora can only frown as she follows, listening to the ripples and patter of dew rain ease to a trickle outside. The darkness leeches out all her sight as her vision goes particle fuzzy in black and dim outlines, she can hardly see the cut of Catra's shoulders in front of her as it bobs up and down in the faint outline of light ahead. Blue and luminsent rim drawn against the moon. 

Scorpia sidles up behind her and flashes an easy smile in the dark and echo of the storm drain while they walk. "Least the rain's let up. Someone's looking out for us."

"It's called luck." Catra grumbles as they come to the end of the pipe where she clicks off her torch and readies her stance against the barring grate. Shoulder bearing up and against the rusted metal as she bunches up her muscles as they begin to push. "And sooner or later..." she grunts. Grate bearing out of place as Catra's shoulder digs deep. "It's going to run out-"

Catra's cut short as the butt of a gun stock bashed the bone of Catra's unsuspecting face. 

"Fuck!"

"Hands in the fucking air. Don’t be stupid."

Two H.O.R.D.E soldiers, clad in kevlar vests and dark uniforms stood over them, guns pointed and aimed at their heads.  Catra curled up on the ground, fisting her hair and groaning. Though Adora noted it sounded more annoyed than pained but that didn’t stop her cheek from aching with sympathetic hurt.

"Easy there, friend." Scorpia came up behind her, nudging in between the barrel and herself. One arm stretching out across her front. "Nobody here is looking for a fight."

"Then do yourself a favor and get your hands in the fucking air."

"Fuck you." Catra, the idiot, wheezed from the ground. The other soldier’s laid out a solid kick in her gut and a rush of wind swiftly exited the girl’s lungs. 

"Hey, hey! We’re cooperating look! See?" Adora raised her hands above her head and gave Scorpia a prompting nudge with her shoulder. Slowly, Scorpia placed her hands behind her head, eyeing the assault rifle that hadn’t strayed from either of their heads. One of the soldiers approached and shoved Adora to the ground face first into the gravel next to Catra. 

"ngh…still want to leg it?"Catra’s chin is sporting a nasty bruise, and her eye’s a bit swollen. But as far as Adora can tell she’s still got all her teeth and a twisted sense of humor so Adora counts it as a plus.

_Still..._"Can you not for five minutes?" Adora’s cheek presses into the dirt and she bears her teeth at the way the rocks bite into her skin. The grunt’s boot solidly plants itself in the valley of her lower back. 

"Ok…so serious." Catra’s self satisfied smirk made her blood simmer.

"Oof!" Scorpia came crashing down on her other side. "I thought it was funny,"

"Shut up. All of you." Barked the guard as he pulled out his radio that crackles to life and hands something else to his partner. "Sick of this shit. Yeah. Got a couple stragglers on the perimeter."

The guard leans down over Catra and- **_Beep_**

_ Oh fuck. _

"Easy there buddy boy," jeered Catra.

There wasn’t any time.

"Shut. Up."

Light Hope wasn’t coming to fix this.

Adora tallied up the worst possible outcomes in her head, how many casualties she might come away with - the guard leaned over her and brushed the hair away from the back her neck. 

_Do or die._

** _Beep_ **

Adora swiveled and kicked the guards feet out from underneath him before jamming her elbow into his windpipe and rolling over to straddle his waist and deliver a teeth clenching punch to the face. 

"Shit!" Catra yelped, eyes blown wide already rising up on her arms.

"What the fuck!?" All too fast the soldier drew his handgun aiming it directly at her face, sight trained on her, finger twitching on the trigger- **_Bang! _**The shot rang high pitched screaming in her ears as she rolledover on her side clutching her head to keep it from imploding. And Catra - the barrel of her revolver still smoking from the shot - held her gaze and eyes hard. Jaw clenched so tight that the muscle in her cheek flexed and jutted out against the moonlight. Not a second later Catra leveled the gun towards the ground and - _**Bang!** Fuck._

Adora turned away and dry heaved. "Oh fuck me. I-I thought we were just gonna - " she gags "- hold them up or something."

Catra peered down at her. Brows knitted and mouth shuttering open for a moment as if to say something. Closed it. Opened it. Closed it again. Before she eventually quieted in favor of turning away and pocketing the revolver in the backside of her pants.

"Uh…Catra? You might wanna see this."

_ Shit. _

Adora didn’t even have any time to protest before Scorpia outstretched hand offered up the battered scanner to Catra. Her stomach lurched as she watched Catra turn away, the glare from the screen illuminating what Adora imagined would be Catra’s confusion and shock. It was dark, but Adora watched as the lines of the other girl's body grew rigid like a corpse. She could feel her heart in her throat, suffocating her with a pressure that was mounting higher and higher. With Catra’s back still turned away from her Adora’s attention focused on the highlighted raindrops that were falling like static in the blue halo. She felt sick. When Catra finally looked up and away from the screen her voice was raw.

"You’re infected."

__________

Adora had to admit they’d taken it better than she thought they would. That primarily being the fact that they hadn’t shot her dead alongside those soldiers back on the Boston wall. They walked in relative silence now, with daylight blooming over the horizon as they traveled over rooftops and ladder bridges throughout the city's downtown - thick foliage and crumbling asphalt paving the way. Catra led. Not even sparing a stinging snark or passive aggressive leer Adora's forlorn way.

Which...was fine. Which was good. This was better than she'd hoped for, she thought as she burned holes into Catra's back...

_ The silence was deafening. A ring and fuzz that had somehow stopped up her ears and clouded her vision. All of which she floated amidst as if senseless and empty, awash with the vision of Catra, fists clenched around the scanner's plastic cartridge and her hair damp and laid flat against her head with rain. And her eyes... _

_ Scorpia had stood a ways apart in the static background keeping watch, but Adora didn’t have to guess if she was listening in. _

_ "I…I can explain." _

_ "Yeah? Well you better explain fucking fast," Catra threw the scanner down but didn’t approach. She seemed intent as getting as physically far away from Adora as possible. The barest of timber trebeling in the back of her throat as her voice strained to keep level under the white noise of rain. _

_"Look." Adora frantically rolled up her sleeve and unwrapped the bandage to reveal the bite that had scabbed over. As the wrappings fell to the side the skin underneath where her wound laid bare rose with the telltale rash of infection. But free of any flaring inflammation and discharge. It was clean. It was healing.  _

_ Catra swallowed. "I don’t care how you got infected," she said turning away again.  _

_ "I _ _t’s three weeks old." Adora insisted.  _

_ "Everyone turns within two days Adora so stop bullshiting." _

_ "Catra, it’s three weeks. Why would I lie to you?" _

_ Catra’s face stiffens and her eyes harden. There is silence.  _

_"Catra…?" Scorpia prompted.  _

_ Catra stood there, gaze trained on the ground, jaw clenched and fists digging fingernails into her palms. She glanced at Adora’s arm, and then at her face.  _

So yeah, they’d taken it better than Adora thought. 

_ Better than Light Hope's reaction anyway... _

She kicked her leg up on the edge of the building and hauled herself onto the plank bridge connecting the rooftops. Out here, outside the quarantine zone, life was so different. Adora spent a lot more of her time looking out for infected, stabbing infected, outrunning infected, narrowly escaping infected, watching infected…watching how their bodies twitched and spasmed, curled and concaved in on themselves. Scorpia sent another arrow flying into an unsuspecting clicker down on the adjacent rooftop, and Adora shivered at the fact that it would’ve been her had she not been immune. Stuck in her body with no control over what she did, who she hurt. She blinked and glanced at Scorpia who bent down to salvage the arrow, Catra a couple leagues ahead of them. 

"Nice shot," she chanced, observing tepidly from a safe informal distance that had grown between her and the two smugglers.

Scorpia’s eyes flicked up at her momentarily before glancing back down at the flint tip. The shaft had broken at the head, dangling by splintering wood. Scorpia’s frown deepened as she twisted the arrowhead off and pocketed it for later. "Thanks."

Adora stood there for a moment in Scorpia’s wake. Watching her step over the limp clicker after Catra. Adora knew they had taken it better than she thought they would. But she supposed it was too much to ask that they actually be ok with it. She glanced down at the clicker, pausing, before passing over the corpse and trailing them over the horizon.

__________

"No, no nononononononono. Fuck!"

Scorpia ran and collapsed knees first next to a Firefly lying in a pool of her own blood. Hands fumbling and shaking as she patted down pockets searching for…something. Breathing shakily and eyes flashing black and forth haphazardly.

"Scorpia. Scorpia - shit. Scorpia!" Catra grabs the older woman’s elbow and pulls her back. "What are you doing." Her eyes hard, but flickering. 

"Maybe they had a - a map or something to tell us where they were going." Scorpia sputtered wrenching free from Catra’s grasp and continued digging through pockets.

"Alright look. We did our part." Catra leveled a steady hand at Scorpia to calm her frantic search. "We got to the capital building like they said. S’not our fault they went and got shot up by some H.O.R.D.E pigs."

"Do you know where they were going?" Scorpia ignores Catra and looks up from her fumbling to level her gaze at Adora. Eyes blown wide and erratic.

Adora stutters, caught off guard. "Uh - out west. Somewhere in Colorado."

Catra laughs short and incredulous "Well that’s not happening-"

"Catra."

Catra stills and makes eye contact with Scorpia, mouth agape and hands raised palms open with nothing better to offer. "This is ridiculous," Catra huffs. "You know how far out in fucking candy land that is from here?"

Even Adora has to admit Scorpia is starting to sound crazy.

"Not as far if we had a car."

Desperate.

"It is over. Scorpia. We’re going home."

It’s out of character.

"I’m not-. I’m not going anywhere, Wildcat," she swallows, breathing shakily. "This is my last stop."

Oh. Adora’s shoulders tense as Scorpia’s droop in defeat.

"What are you even talking about?" Catra hisses exasperated.

"Holy shit…" Catra turns sharply and looks at Adora for the first time since she’d told her about the bite. 

"She’s infected."

Days later, when they’re well and truly on the road, Adora and Catra silently agree to not talk about it. There wasn’t anything to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did Scorpia a dirty bros
> 
> ...
> 
> So first chapter is up and running...I'm probably gonna wait and see how well it's received and if it goes well I'll throw up the rest of it. 
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	2. Summer II (Catra)

"There." Catra says as she kicks her leg up on the guard rail, the breeze ruffling her shirt collar around her cheek. They’re situated high up on the roadside curve that borders the ridge road they’ve been walking on. Travelling straight through the night prior, only stopping to check and categorize landmarks from memory as Catra guided them down highway expanses corroded asphalt strips and, as far as Catra was concerned, an open ended journey. Sore muscles and the knots in the soles of her feet hadn’t helped her disposition either, not that Adora would care she thinks. "That’s the place."

From beside her, Adora’s brow narrows and scrunches the wrinkle on her forehead as she stares out across the horizon at the valley’s dug out town husk, nestled deep in the grove below. "And why is Entrapta important again?"

"Entrapta is important," Catra drawls, "because she’s the only grease monkey I know that can fix up a working car," she states, already vaulting over the railing and down the overmound to the bottom grassy wood below.

"Unless you know any other mechanics out here that has a spare limo lying around - "

"Ok ok I get it. Jesus." Adora intercuts annoyed and brisk as she brushes past.

The summer greens are in vibrant glow as the sun blazes low in the sky red like orange peels and lens flares, the lush hum and drove of the wilderness growing up around them sprouted and shot skywards in growth. It’s so sickeningly sticky with summer heat and sweat that Catra rolls her shoulders with the discomfort it brings, listening to the rise of cicadas chirp and hum as Adora skids down the bluff behind her, the sound of her heels digging into dirt cliff. Catra turns to face her as she rights her stance to a standing posture, hip cocked to the side as she goads.

They’re still a ways up and above the valley divet that houses the remains. Broken out store fronts and strip mall lots that border the main boulevard are cast orange with the fade of light. Awashed and brilliant in sunset dew hue as they advance closer and closer to the crumbling ruin. By nightfall, it would be unrecognizable.

"Come on." She says frowning at the pervasive thought. "We need to find her before it gets dark."

Adora follows close behind, the tell tale rustle of her foot falls amidst the leaves and stirring the grass like a fleeting breeze. It's oddly familiar. This shadowing of movements as Catra feels her footfalls press into her own tracks behind her. If Catra lets loose her mind enough she can hear the grass turn to asphalt, the trees to concrete. She can hear the din of the cafeteria as the ration line shutters trundle open and Adora's presence at her back turned pressing and alert. But always close. Always on hand...It was familiar in a way that refused to sit well and irritated her if anything. So easily falling back into old patterns made her anxious to throw all to the wind.

"So this…Entrapta, you think she’ll help us?"

Catra is silent as she walks.

__________

She pitches another bottle down the length of alley into the dim, straight into the silver fish line trip wire that shot across like spider silk in wait for one of them to step on. The resounding explosion ripped sound waves and buzzed lighting on impact, the ricochet of shrapnel and bolt nails spraying a healthy 5 foot radius around the epicenter of the initial impact. Catra grimaces as the noise echoes to ripples and then stillness seeped into the ground.

"I hate this,’ Adora grinds as she steps up beside Catra, the felt of her fatigues very nearly brushing up to Catra’s own.

She frowns as she follows close behind, stepping out from the car door brigade they’d thrown themselves behind to avoid the damage, broken window shards crunching under her shoes as she arched and realigned the spine of her back. "Yeah. Entrapta’s always been a little on edge."

Adora rounds on her, brow upturned and accusatory as they survey the scorch and residual explosives, the burn marks marred into crawling asphalt and brick still smoking and thrumming. Catra doesn't know what to say other than she's right which - honestly? was not within her emotional or spiritual range. 

"Listen just…when we find her let me do the talking alright? Entrapta’s never been the most," she pauses, in search of the most delicate phrasing that could come to mind, "…stable. of individuals."

Adora pokes at a protruding spike that jarringly juts from the wall, the sharp splintered shaft sending Catra’s frontal sensitivity into flaring annoyance. "Not keen on strangers?"

Catra considers it. "Something like that." She strides ahead at point, making sure to eye and measure each step before she let her feet fall as she went.

"Hey, how do you know her anyway?" Adora continues. "I mean, you were in the city all the time, she’s way out here. What’s the story behind that?"

Catra bristles and fords ahead, agitation prickling at the back of her throat as she advances. Of all the - Catra bites back a growl. She can’t afford to be distracted right now as she strains her eyes in the shade of the alley for a flash of silver, the hint of danger. A whif of napalm could save her life if she could think to catch it. That is - if Adora would do them both the courtesy of shutting the fuck up.

"Can we not play 20 questions when we’re trying to survive a literal death trap? I mean, I know it’s hard for you but could you just _try_ to _not _micromanage everything for just 5 minutes?" She plucks a chunk of brick block from the ground and chucks it down the hall expanse where it clunks and prattles down on asphalt.

"I’m just trying to get a handle on the situation, asshole. Excuse me for trying to be prepared."Another brick. Another bottle gone shattering across the tarnish and asphalt.

She could roll her eyes. "And you need my entire life story to be ‘prepared?’ You know, just because you haven’t been around for the last 3 years doesn't mean you’re entitled to a subsequent debriefing. Kind of the opposite actually!" Catra’s breathing has heightened so that she can hear it puff and pass through her nose when she comes to a halt in front of the hinge locked door in front of her, its paint chipped and peeling as she stares down at her feet and at the weeds rooted up around them. Adora’s voice gone low and quiet behind her.

"The fireflies found _me_, Catra."

Catra growls without turning around. "And you just loved that didn’t you? Say what you want about your Firefly propaganda bullshit Adora but you couldn’t wait to get out of Boston."

Catra turns to glare at her and - almost falters. The sight of Adora’s fitted army threads and dog tags hung around her shirt line as she’s pasted dark against the Summer heat, stalls her hand before the blow and stutters the bloodlust as she takes it in. Her hand squeezes hard and rigid on the handle she’s already pushing open. "…So quit acting like I owe you something and just shut up the fuck up."

Adora doesn’t say anything.  And the sight of the silent surrender feels satisfying enough to slightly cull her residual anger. With nothing else to say she turns and kicks in the door with all her righteous fury still bubbling deep down in her gut before stepping into the shade of the garage.

It’s only until she’s stepped in to the cool darkness of the open walled garage does she hear the click and trigger of the noose looped round her ankle tight and secure like a rabbit’s trap.

_Fucking Entrapta._

She looks up just in time for the world to go shot and pulled beneath her as gravity inverts when she feels the world go capsize.

__________

"Do you believe in karma?"

Catra growls somewhere deep and rooted in the bowels of her gut. "Get. Me. Down."

From below her she can hear Adora snicker like the godamn hyena she is. The snag of her ankle aches with the brush burn of rope and it cuts into her skin unpleasantly, though not as painful as wire which she supposes she should be grateful for. Even though she's slowly rotating clockwise with the sway of gravity still pulling at her with the steady rise of her agitation. When she’s done a full loop around she can finally see her - Adora, upturned and inverted as Catra inclines her chin even further against gravity, the other girl appearing as bratty and satisfied as she expected with her arms crossed against her chest like she had something to be proud about.

Catra growls. "_Now_, asshole."

"Yeah yeah," Adora concedes, though she’s still smirking like the bitch she is when she turns away. "I think that fridge is the counterweight. Give me a minute." She’s out a view quickly, and Catra’s silently glad of it. If she had to look at that godamn self satisfied _grinning infuriating_ -

She _growls. "_Hurry up," and rotates.

From behind her, as she turns slow and lazy at gravity’s mercy, she can hear Adora distantly snicker. Digging her nails into her crossed arms as she listens to the annoying grate of the noise against her ears. "Relax. You know I actually think this is good for you. Maybe the blood’ll finally get to your head,"

Catra _snarls. _

_"_You! -…Fuck."

She sights it in the distance. Pinpricked as it approaches but - definitely distinct. It’s clothes and rot wrench stench as pungent and strongly fragrant enough to pull across the empty courtyard laying outside the garage shutter door. It’s decaying muscles, rotted and putrid with overgrown fungus festering on the surface of its skin and boiled rash, flex and pull as it pushes forward rapidly - practically flailing as it throws itself towards them. At them.

It’s only one.

And then it’s two.

And then…

Their screeches are winnowed and guttural and-

"Shit." Adora curses.

Bloodthirsty.

"Adora. Cut faster." She presses, already pulling at the crevice behind in the small of her back for the revolver, loading the barrel and thumbing in the bullets as fast as her fumbling hands will allow. They clink and lock into place as she aims upside down and focused.

**BAM!**

It rips through bone and sinew like tin and sheet metal-

"Adora!" She braces her teeth against the next shot as it jerks her arms and she sets her sights for the brain. **BAM!** "How’s it coming!?"

"Give me another five!"

Catra can hear the brush and cut of tether under Adora’s knife blade as she saws away at the rope, feels the weight of it give a little above her as it whines under her weight. She clicks open the barrel once to check the shot count to see the remaining 4 bronze cylinders winking back at her in the glint as she locks the metal back into place.

"Better make it four."She clenches her left eye shut so that he muscle in her cheek pulls up as she levels her head on her shoulder to rest - **BAM!**

"Hey! Over here!" **BAM!**

The shot catches on its shin and it goes splaying out across the asphalt with a satisfying crunch and thump! Cascading down as the overgrowing fungus goes flying off at impact around it, even as it continues to pull and contract compulsively on the ground where it falls. And for-_fuck _sake she was aiming for the _fucking _head! Its alarmed and enraged screaming all but rings the _fucking _dinner bell as it continues to thrash and convulse with agonizing pitch and clarity in the stillness. They begin to truly swarm and leech out of the woodwork, from all sides - all angles and directions and Catra shoots her eyes down towards Adora -

"Adora!" **BAM! **

The bullet tears into shoulder flesh and back where it nestles tight and fast into the runner’s back muscle. Pitches forward a little off balance and key as it jerks. She shoots again! **BAM!**

To send it falling down face first at Adora’s feet where her hands hold tight to the rope knuckle white still lashed tight to the anchor, eyes wide as her eyes shoot up at Catra. And Catra looks back down, her own eyes and pupils down to slits as she huffs and breathes out the panic. Her hands shake as she lets her muscles unclench and hang down around the sides of her ears, staring down at Adora who’s mussed up strands of hair stick to her sweaty forehead and the blue and frenzy of her eyes storm worry and fear. They stare at each other for a moment when Catra suddenly wakes herself -

"Keep fucking cutting!" She shouts as she twists the muscles in her abdomen to turn away swinging and lowing around so she can target her next victim. Eyes wild and hard as she narrows them down the sight again. -

"_FUCK!"_

Before she even gets the chance to nail another butter brain for good the support of fixation falls away and any solid state collapses alongside her as she falls. Down down down, until all that’s left is the floor and concrete ramming into the bone of her shoulder - grunting and huffing at the air that forces up and out her lungs at the sudden impact.

"Ugh…" Catra stretches out her good arm against the ground and listens to the fabric of her shirt brush up against the dirt and grime underneath, up and over her head to help her roll up onto her knees. Breathing heavily and strained as she forces the disorienting sway of everything to right itself. "A little- " _huff "- a little warning next time!?"_

She forces her eyes open and palms outwards, reaches for the gun that - that isn’t in her grasp anymore and escaping her range as she suddenly stirs and flutters her hands out in front of her for the familiar grip and press of trigger. She panics! Pushing the pain aside with a wave of brain fogging adrenaline that shoves her higher up on her knees and now hands as she crawls a step forward searching, panting, looking for - the gun!

It’s skittered a few feet away under the a work bench! The sound of infected reverberating in her ears and the empty garage hollow as more enter behind the initial wave, she can feel them breathing down her neck as she lunges! Knees, hands, reaching - throwing her body forward as she - _reaches!_

She grunts and grits her teeth as she throws herself backwards on her bad side and shoulder on the ground, arms outstretched - extended. Rabid breaths clawing out of her gritted mouth and furious grimace as she locks down the sight -

_Shk!_

The machete falls down and cracks down on skull where the blade finds its home. The extended blade shaft nestled deep into bone glistens and drips red in the fading light, glistening and shining before the grip readjusts and wrenches free in one gushing bone crunching arc of blood ribboning into the air! Slaying and splattering across the concrete before it rears back overhead! And falls down again in one resolute true swift hack! Down across the vein and front from the joint of shoulder and neck to the left hip bone so the guts and blood have no where left to go but the floor…Catra stares up at it in shock.

"Move your ass if you want to live!"

The sightless eye holes of the gas mask shine and reflect white sheen as the sun falls across the pitiless dark sights. The breathing and reverberation of breath drawing in, out, from the gas canisters screwed and latch onto the side of its clasps at the bearers face. The sound of it echos around Catra's ears as she listens to the grate in and out with each draw. The newcomer stands tall above her, looking down at her for what feels longer than the several half seconds Catra knows to be true. But as she’s stared down and pinned as she is in this strange limbo of lock brace, she can’t help but feel scrutinized.

"Catra!?"

She stirs, eyes cutting to Adora who’s bolting over across the expanse at deadlock sprint with the edge of her knife unsheathed and shining as she pumps her arms back and forth with each long charged stride. Catra throws herself up, scrambling disoriented and swaying as she pushes after the masked figure - who’s already turned and set sprinting out a separate door down the back of the garage.

"Come on! Follow them!" She shouts, as she reaches for Adora, hand outstretched and hunched over, already throwing herself after and shoving Adora as they scramble after the trail of their new companion.

__________

The second Adora has squeezed in after her Catra pivots on her heel and jams the door with a metal pipe rod while Adora holds it closed with her back, heels digging into the ground, teeth gritting as infected throw their bodies against it. It rattles and shudders but holds well, and when Catra’s sure the door isn’t gonna come busting down with a swarm of infected she leans down on her knees dry heaving a little. She vaguely hears Adora slide down into a seated position, hands framing her head as she catches her breath.

She feels their gaze on her before noticing them, stood bak in the filter dim of the boarded windows and tarnished dug out bar they find themselves in, booths ripped out from the seats and barricade furniture clustered and upturned like corn rows. They’re a good head shorter than Catra, she’s sure if she stood to full height they’d only come up to her collar bone. But the reflective eye sights of the gas mask betray little other than a vague voidless flavor of contempt and Catra finds her mouth gone dry as they adrenaline fades and the dread sets in.

"…Entrapta. I-"

Entrapta’s head suddenly cuts to Adora who’s still panting slightly on the ground. Without warning she advances on Adora and pulls out a concealed pair of handcuffs, grabbing Adora’s hands and lashing them to a pipe jutting out near the wall.

"Catra!" Adora yells in confusion.

Before Catra can even think to act the Entrapta has turned on her and kicked in her knee, hand on the back of her neck bending downwards.

She’s strong for someone her size.

"You got any bites?"

"No,"

"Anything sprouting?"

"No godamit I’m clean!"

"If I see so much as a twitch- "

Catra abruptly launches to her feet, hands gripping Adora’s wrists as her arms come swinging down to bludgeon the smaller woman. She’d ripped the godamn fucking pipe off the wall! "Calm down!" She shouts before cutting sharply on Entrapta.

"Are you done!"

"Am I done-!? You come into my home, you set off all my traps, you attack me - listen who even is this bitch and what is she doing here?"

"You fucking handcuffed me! Did you think that I’d just be what - _okay_ with that?"

"You’re a stranger and I had a working theory that evidenced you could’ve posed a threat. Clearly I was right!" Entrapta’s voice is shrill and hostile as she levels her machete at Adora’s face, muttering nonsensical things about trap prototypes and bigger blast radiuses.

"Entrapta-!" Catra heart spikes a little and she juxtaposes herself in front of Adora on reflex. One hand raised placatingly towards Entrapta, the other reaching out behind her just brushing Adora’s chained wrists. She’s not used to being the defuser in these situations. "Alright listen, I want to get out of your hair just as much as you do so I’ll cut to the chase. We need a car."

"Oh, a car! Well isn’t that great! Let me just walk you outside and we can take the Volvo out for a test spin why not!" She rips off the breathing mask, eyes burning and teeth bared. A smudge of oil grease smeared across her nose bridge.

"Entrapta- "

"What makes you think I have a car huh? Even more what makes you think I’d just give it to you?"

"You owe Scorpia some favors. I’m cashing in on her behalf."

'Scorpia maybe. But you- " She jabs the mask at Catra accusingly.

"Have Scorpia’s blessing. I’m doing this as a favor for her genius. And just because there’s bad blood between us- "

"Hah-! Bad blood? Bad blood." Catra’s hackles rise unconsciously. "Newsflash, asshole. You’re kind of the entire fucking reason I’m out here in the first place!"

"You hated it in Boston," it’s pathetic. But Catra reasons that it isn’t far from the truth.

"That’s besides the point. _And if you think- "_

"Look! I want out. You want me out. What’s more mutually beneficial than that?"

Entrapta isn’t happy about it. And there really isn’t anything to stop her from throwing the two of them back out at her borders or hell - saying fuck it and just shooting the two of them up right there on the spot. But Entrapta’s eyes flash to Adora who’s still standing behind her watching how things unfold - knuckles gripped white around the metal pipe; Catra can feel the protective heat of Adora’s presence radiate onto her back.

Entrapta sneers and looks at the ground. Conflicted. Muttering and mumbling incessantly before she looks back up "I do this for you, I never see you in my town again."

Catra releases a breath. "Sounds fair."

__________

"So where is Scorpia anyway?"

Catra stiffens as she trains her eyes on Entrapta’s back, the top half of her body lost inside a car hood engine that grates and groans at her tinkering. How could she explain? Explain what happened. How Scorpia had looked at her - with those soulful shining eyes and -…all but begged Catra to do this one thing for her. _Just this one thing…_

Catra clutches at the scrap box allotted to her, the knuckles on her hands gone white as her grip quivers marginally before Cara forces to erect herself.

"Busy."

"Tch," Entrapta straightens as she stands, slamming the hood back down on the decrepit sedan when she turns back to face Catra. "‘Busy.’”

Catra jerks her head to the side even though Entrapta has her eyes cast to the cloth wiping down the grease on her hands, catching sight of Adora a few leagues away eyeing a precariously fixtured flamethrower rigged at the entrance of Entrapta’s garage workshop…huh.

"Alright, look." Entrapta announces. "We’re gonna have to push Emily down the road to get her jump started. Figure you and brawn for brains can handle that department…" Before Catra can speak her mind Entrapta passes casually onwards and drops a bulking engine part into Catra’s box, weighing her down heavy as she staggers to readjust grip and hand on the weighted crate. Catra grunts as she braces her legs to restabalize her wobbly stance.

"Emil-? Whatever." Catra grinds between her teeth, then growls. "And that’s not gonna draw a fuck ton of infected with the motor rally? I thought you were smart; how do you expect us to get a swarm of them if you can’t get it going first try?"

"Well that’s what bullets are for."

__________

Adora’s got a good deal more bulk to her than Catra. Firefly pampering had its perks she spitefully admits as she watches her back shift underneath the fitted fabric of her shirt, jacket tied loose at her waist and sleeves rolled up to her forearms. Catra redoubles her efforts and bears into the trunk with her shoulder, feet and heels digging into asphalt.

The brunt of her arm aches as the tires roll and struggle down over cragged concrete and bite into her shoulder. Her growl turns guttural. "Of all the cars she thought to fix up she went with the Subaru."

Adora’s voice doesn’t carry the same strain, but the laugh she emits out her mouth comes out short and out of breath when she replies "be thankful it’s a decent color,"

"It’s a fucking hatchback!"

Adora laughs at that. And - …it’s light and throaty so that Catra can trace its earnestness. Something dormant and nostalgic lights up in Catra’s memory. Back when that laugh had been a smaller blossoming sound in the folds of a H.O.R.D.E bunk, and Catra had been decades and centuries younger for it…But she wasn’t a child. Hadn’t been for a long time. Not like Adora who was still so pressed and pure down to the bleach white of her socks. If Catra’s self respect was a high one then so be it.

Catra jerks her head back down to her chest and shuts her eyes as she pushes her muscles to a sore strain. And if she catches Adora’s side eyes she doesn’t say anything.

Just then, the engine roars to life and sends mechanical burning vibrations under her palms. The thrumming doesn’t desist with the stirring rev.

"She lives!" Entrapta exclaims maniacally from the driver’s seat. And then almost like an afterthought "I can’t believe that actually worked."

Catra overlooks her shoulder. "It better. Because we’ve got company!"

Their forms are distant and pinpricks when she sights them, weeping out of the woodwork like termites. They advance quick and rapid. Throwing themselves forward to let their legs lash out and catch up to their ragged pace.

She grits her teeth and ushers them both forward in through the back trunk window as the car peels off pistons and engine smog. "Go! Go!"

__________

"Stay in the car."

Adora snorts as if she’s being chastised, glares back but kicks her feet up on the dash anyway, folding her arms across her stomach as she leans back in the seat and pushes herself to an incline. Catra eyes her for a moment frowning before turning around to exit the car door, slamming it shut.

She’s been dreading the inevitable departure since she got the idea to seek her out in the first place, but it’s just as awkward if not more so when she takes the rubber siphon from her outstretched hand and shuffles laxly as she tries to compromise the best way to cut herself free.

"She must be pretty important." Entrapta says.

There’s little fanfare in the statement and Catra can’t help when she perks and asks "what."

"Your friend. She must be worth a lot important for you to come out here to ask _me _for help."

Catra’s chest swells for half a heartbeat which she insists is indigence and secrecy. No one needed to know about Adora’s…condition. People would either think they were crazy or try to kill them. Probably both. "I told you, it’s a favor - "

"For Scorpia, right. No offense but I don’t really have much stock in your loyalties."

_Well, there wasn’t anything to say to that._

"Look, I don’t care what kind of bullshit mission you’re on or how much shit you’re getting paid or for whatever reason you’re actually out here for. But don’t insult my intelligence alright?" She shifts a bit on her feet so that she’s squarely facing Catra head on. "We’re shitty people; that’s just the facts. And shitty people don’t do anything for free. So when you come here asking me for a car so you can go out frolicking in no man’s land - a place ridden with hunters, infected, and bat shit crazy crack head like me - all as a _favor_ for someone you never really gave two shits about- "

"Don’t bring Scorpio into this - " Catra bristles.

"And after the shit you pulled with me - "

"This has nothing to do with that -!"

"I think I have the right to call bullshit!"

Catra’s fingers clench as she feels the static and rotting roiling sensation in her stomach spoil. Her gaze heated breathing hot air through her nose. "Do you have a point."

For all her venom and her fire Entrapta doesn’t say anything, the shimmer and plaster of orange haze tinting and glancing off the highlight of her gas mask. She just rocks back on her heels deflated and stares at her with narrowed eyes that, despite everything, don’t look so resentful anymore - just quizzical. Like Catra’s a puzzle that stubbornly doesn’t want to fit together.

"Don’t fuck it up."She offers the keys to the car, never breaking eye contact.

If Adora heard any of that she doesn’t say. And Catra doesn't bother to find out as she rolls them onto the freeway, the silhouette of Entrapta’s figure slowly shrinking and receding in the review smaller and smaller as they go.


	3. Summer III (Catra)

"Damn it."

"Hey, what happened to sleeping?"

"Not tired."

"You know we’re driving in shifts right? And if we die because you fall asleep at the wheel- "

"Now who’s got a stick up the ass?"

Catra grips the wheel and her face assumes a vague atmosphere of annoyance but she doesn’t push it any further. They’d been driving for just under a week now, stopping on occasion to scavenge what food and supplies they could with little interference other than the occasional infected. Catra bit her tounge, the last thing they needed was bad juju messing with their chances of survival. "Fuck."

"What the hell are you even doing?" Catra leered into the rear view mirror trying to catch sight of Adora’s face, the overgrowth and grass shafting seaming through the road falling behind them as they drove - a glimpse of Adora’s army jacket bordering her line of sight.

Over the days spent on the road they’d wordlessly assumed a tentative compromise where their conversations adopted some sense of civilty so long as they didn’t hit each other’s sore spots. Adora didn’t talk about Catra’s otherwise seedy business ventures and Catra didn’t bring up Adora’s annoyingly inconvenient, self righteous, big headed, arguably theatric if not completely dramatic, bullshitty, Firefly brainwashing god complex.

Neither of them said anything about their time in the H.O.R.D.E... The result formed something almost familiar. 

"I’m fixing this stupid walkman I found," Catra hears the thunk of what she assumes is the walkman in question as Adora huffs in frustration. "Trying to anyway…"

"The fuck’s a walk. man?"

Adora snorts and breathes out a lingering laugh. "Walkman. It’s a…it’s a box that plays music into some headphones. Or it would if I could hook up these stupid wires."

"Are you just a magnet for this kind of crap or am I missing something?"

"Oh you’re missing something alright," Adora picks up the walking man or whatever the hell it’s called and starts fiddling with it absentmindedly. "And it starts with brah and ends with ains…Fuck." There’s the sound of fracturing plastic and Catra chuckles bemusedly. Adora’s muscled hands must’ve fractured it.

"Shut up." Adora grumbles. She can hear the clinking of the plastic shards.

Catra sobers up a bit and grins out at the stretch of road before she dissolves back into unabashed cackles. ‘Hardy fuckin har.’ Adora barks but Catra thinks she could hear the smile teasing at her lips until…"Whoa. What the hell…?"

Catra’s laughter dies and she eases up off the gas to let the car roll into a gradual halt. In front of the main road is a massive blockade of car husks that have bottled necked the freeway and stem off the road into the city.

"Great."

Catra remains silent, mulling over the choices they had. On the one they could turn around and navigate several weeks out of the way to get around, risking more days spent with infected and fewer chances of running into supplies. Or…

"We should head back. Go around."

"There’s no food out there."

"You don’t know that."

"I know that there’ll be food in there."

"You and every other hunter within a thousand mile radius."

"Do you have a statistic on that?"

"Catra." She’s not too thrilled about it either, really. But what other options were there?

‘We’ll run out of gas before we get around. And I didn’t bust my fucking ass in that shit storm of a town just to walk all the way to Colorado, Adora." Adora doesn’t say anything and when she turns around, arm hanging over the seat head, Adora simply looks at her - eyes scrunched up and teeth worrying her bottom lip. She glances at the frontage road and Catra watches as her eyes flicker in thought. Eventually Adora simply sighs and Catra tries not to think about how she already regrets turning down down down into the valley of concrete.

__________

Catra eases them through and down the city at a timid cautious pace, the wheels of the groaning car plinking and protesting as they roll over craggy bits of discarded concrete and sprouting greenery. The city’s completely ransacked. Busted out store fronts and broken glass, scorch marks mar the outsides of buildings…the apartment windows that aren’t boarded up are smashed in or otherwise blown open by the frames, crumbling brick and cement delicately held in place by the absence of disruption. Catra’s brow furrows at the crease when she sees the firefly insignia tagged and printed in bleeding spray paint over the fade of the H.O.R.D.E’s propaganda posters. 

It’s different than Entrapta’s dugout town. The buildings stretch higher and the growth is more intrusive. Paths become narrowed alleys that funnel them down concrete channels. Catra doesn’t like how boxed in the air feels as they idle down the crumbling road, trickling through deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. Adora stays quiet in the seat, tugging persistently at the belt as she angles her head up against the window to look up at the shadowy monoliths above. Catra frowns and tugs at Adora’s shirt neck to yank her back.

"Keep your head away from the windows," Catra growls as if scolding a child. She’s on edge with how boxed in she feels by the towering buildings that jeer down at them. It’s enough anxiety as it is without having to worry about Adora getting her head blown off sight seeing.

Just then Adora shoves at Catra’s hand still fisted and clenched around the fabric of her army fatigues and grumbles reproachfully, already turning away "I’m looking out for a sniper's nests, genius." Before Catra can protest she’s back at the window, cheek practically pressed up against the glass where the shadows sheen across the plexiglass panes when she speaks up again "just keep your eyes on the road, alright? I want to get out of here before nightfall."

Catra screws her mouth shut and knuckles the wheel, her mouth slightly open and unsure as she side eyes Adora for favor of precaution, then back at the road as she angles out of the way of an upturned soda machine. Her mouth forms a thin line in a lapse of silence, the pointer finger of her right hand picking at the leather and tapping on its surface before speaking again. "Yeah, well…we might want to stop and loot around before- "

Catra slams the breaks and brings the Subaru to a halting stand still, the insides of the interior lurching ahead as the two passengers are pitched forward in their seats. Catra grits her teeth.

"Jesus - hey easy on the clutch McQueen.- "

"Put your seatbelt on." Catra instructs already reaching over her shoulder to bring her own belt lashed around her neck and chest. Her eyes trained ahead as she digs her nails into the leather hugging the steering wheel.

Adora’s head angles upwards and her eyes narrow ahead onto the expanse of road in front of them, splayed out on the tunneled street when her breath comes out shocked and entranced. "What?- "

In front of them ambles a lanky shouldered wiry woman. The frays of her ragged tank top and grimy pants smothered in muck and dirt. It’s difficult to discern from as far back as they are, but Catra can see she’s clutching at her side and the stains of old tarnished blood sprouting from beneath her hand when she stumbles forward. She’s thin and under padded, vulnerable. Weak. Catra urges again. "Adora. Put your seatbelt on. Now."

Even as she protests Adora slowly brings the belt across her front and clicks it into place. Her face turned to Catra and scrunched up in confusion. "Well - what about her? We’ve got to help her."

Catra angles her head lower to her chest and down the sight of her vision when she mumbles. "She isn’t even hurt." With little warning Catra slams on the gas and flings the car forward on a rampant advance, tearing up earth and rubble as she goes flying down the narrow enclosing street.

"Catra!" Adora yells as she clutches at the handle by the roof window. "Catra, stop!"

"Brace yourself!" She yells as she flattens the pedal to the floor, eyes honed on her target.

"What the fuck are you doing!?- " Just then the glass pane busts and shatters in a spiderweb that obscures their view of the road. The bullet having blasted straight through to the back where it nestled in the fabric of the seat head behind them. Catra shields her eyes shouts out for Adora to hold on to something when - **_KRSCH!_**

The car pivots out of control as it’s sent spinning on an axis of force that rams them from the back right wheel. It’s only enough time for Catra to bring both arms up to shield her head and tuck down into the steering wheel as she curls in to protect her face. Spinning and rolling down in some whirlpool of wandering motion when the screech of metal comes to an immediate jarring stop and the hissing of what remains of the car engine husk keens in a wavering final note.

"Ugh…" Catra’s pulsing vision blooms back to sight in the filtered light, the shattered glass of the wind shield tinkles and patters across the dash and her back as she uncurls and rights herself. The world doesn’t so much spin as it reverberates, in out, in out of focus like a pulsing press of gravity on her temples. The shrill croon and keen of speckled silence fuzzing her headspace like mucky swamp water as she lifts her head up off the dash she’s splayed across. At least Adora couldn’t nitpick her about the airbags….her eyes widen. Fuck.- "Adora!?"

"What the _fuck_ is wrong with you…!?" Adora groans as she rights her spine and lowers her knees and elbows from protecting her center, glass and shard pellets tinkling to the carpet floor as she unfolded her limbs one by one. Catra gives her a cursory once over to make sure nothings disjointed or disconnected in the wrong place. Ankles and elbows all intact as she takes in the open flaps of Adora’s military jacket and fitted t-shirt underneath wrinkled and rumpled sporadically. A strand of dirty golden wheat dangles free from her pony tail and a thin layer of grime and sweat dots her brow, but Catra surmises she’s more or less held together as her chest heaves and expands up and down while she catches her breath. "Can you run?" She pushes. Short of breath and already reaching back for her and Adora’s packs on the back seat.

"_What?_ \- Yeah."

"Good, get out and- " Through the shattered window of the car Catra feels the sudden flash of an arm reach in and over her shoulder, past her front as it loops around. Her hands shoot up to brace and pull around at the padded arm noosed at the neck, and she kicks her legs out to force her body back. "_Catra!?"_

Catra’s teeth are gritted and her face pulls up in a snarl as she opens one eye to watch Adora yanked back by her arm through the door. Her eyes flashing silver and blue and shiny fear as she’s snapped back from view and out of sight in one furious instant. The arms biting into her neck tightens in a rough yank as she’s pulled backwards and another hand pushes the back of her head forwards and down, trying to cut off her oxygen supply. Catra growls openly as she braces her feet against the dash in the car and gives a mighty push with the contraction of her muscles. Bunches up and launches off the pad as she explodes and forces them both stumbling outside into the open air where the light is shallow and dark. The bulk of the person’s body presses close behind her stubbornly. Standing up now on two feet Catra can tell that they’re taller as they hover back in to recoup and reassert a tighter grip. She bows her neck forward even as their arm smashes down on her windpipe before jamming the back of her skull back into the hollow of their nose bone for a quick and satisfying - **_Crnch! _**The fragile bone hollow of their nose cavity concaving in like brittle.

They release her with a pained and piercing shout as Catra feels them reel back and move up to cradle their bleeding pummeled nose. Catra wastes little time as she lunges back into the car and sends her scrabbling hands in search of the silver revolver lying somewhere in the darkness at the floor of the car.

"Mother fucking bitch!" Catra feels the grip of their hand no her ankle before the twisting forceful tug that pulls her back out. She kicks furiously and twists her spine with the stretch of her abdomen so she can kick again at his face as he reels back and is forced to drop her - legs still flailing dangerously furious and savage. 

"Nobody passes through this city without Tung Lashor’s say." They grunt intelligibley with their nose bashed in as it was, the wheeze and pant of the hunter’s breath bringing a cruel snarling smirk to her face as she faces them fully now, turned about with fisted hands.

Catra spits at the tang of blood in her mouth and brushes it away with the outside of her knuckle as she sidles up to a standing position along the shell of the car, breathing bent over and panting as she stands straight just in time to catch their arms that come falling down to grab at her shoulders. "Good thing I didn’t need it." She growls, bunching up the muscles in her back and shoulders for the impending impact. They tussle and tumble in a brawling circle for a moment, each bracing their heels into the surface beneath them and shoving up and forwards against each other’s strength until Catra’s shoved up against the glass surface of a display counter desk_. "Rgh!"_

Catra brings up her arms and shoves back upwards against the hand clamped around her neck and shoving her into hard unforgiving surface. Forced to struggle and strain as she tries to unhinge his grip with the force of her muscles before she’s slammed back down resolutely and fixed. ‘Got a feisty one!’ He grunts above her as he leans down and effectively cages her in against her persistent flailing. "_Help!"_ He shouts.

Catra narrows her eyes as they open and hone in behind her. Teeth bared and snarling as she bunches up her legs underneath her and swipes them solidly at the base of his ankles. He shouts out in surprise as she strikes around the imbalance and careens upright - twisting and grabbing at his own face to rotate and pivot them down onto the ground where she elbows his neck into the dirt and earth. His legs kick out as she straddles his waist and locks him down with the grip of her knees and holds fast as she bears up and over her head - focusing in on target with one final and pounding jaw locking swing to the already fractured nose bone. 

And another.

And another.

And then once again for good measure as the sickening crunch turns to squelch turns to the oozing weep of empty punches to his caved in nose bridge. His kicking legs and empty movements turned to static. And then to silence. Catra breathes deep and ragged as she allows her knees to collapse in across his middle and her hands push up against the gravel. 

Catra lifts her head as soon as it’s down. They’d crashed into some sort of bodega storefront. The lines of grocery store racks set up inside across overgrown linoleum and busted out headlights overtaken with mold creak in the wake of Catra’s hollow panting. She spits again, this time on the man’s shoes as she hastens to stand again, twisting her wrists and double checking to make sure nothing had popped out of any vital sockets. She doesn’t stop to look at his pulpy face as she rushes back to the interior of the car, leans in and grabs at Adora’s pack and picks up the revolver lying complacent in the dark. 

Catra fumbles with another handful of shells as she feeds them into the barrel, eyes set to her work and ears listening for Adora as she canters in the direction of the exit. Catra thinks back to the vision of Adora being hauled out by the waist, hands clawing and scratching at the surface of the door as they had pulled her back. - She ushers herself forward with the pump and swing of her arms. The beads of broken glass skitter and crunch under her shoes when she rockets out of the dark and back into the green glow of the city, eyes unfocused and blinded by the sun that’s still set high and burning in the sky. Catra turns to the side in a panic and-

"Rgh! Ngh…_gah!" _The hooded figure falls to the side in a lumping heap at Adora’s feet. Slack and immobile as Adora stands over the body hunched over. She’s huffing down at an angle as she staresat his prone outline, foggy beaded eyes blazing down wide and open even as her fists are clenched inthe fabric of her cargo pants at the knees. Catra stands a few feet away in shock, eyes locked wide and mouth partially open as she breathes and looks at Adora… 

The street’s gone silent of their struggle, across the expanse of street a ways back where they’d entered Catra can spot the husk of an armored truck. Its engine still steaming and panting ragged as it rumbles hot metal on the grate and sizzled radiator - it’s front grate splattered red. Despite its gruesome finish all can manage to look at is Adora. Adora’s eyes that are narrowed and angry. Adora’s pulse that is rising ad falling at her neck…her face as it shifts and flows underneath the surface and she leans down before stopping herself abruptly. - Catra’s mouth forms a thin line. - As if to check his pulse.

"Hey."

Adora’s head cuts up. Eyes open and unseeing as her breaths continue to draw in and out with automatic unease and her hand reaches out slightly as if she’s still thinking about rolling him over to face the sun. Catra shuffles a minute, leers back down at the thrumming metal monster sat roiling menacingly a few leagues feet away. She throws Adora’s pack in her direction.

"Let’s go." She says. "There’ll be more soon."

__________

"So uhm. - I can’t swim."

"What.?" Adora deadpans.

Catra turns her face away to hide an embarrassed blush. It wasn’t her fault there weren’t any swimming pools back in Boston. She’s a little miffed at how Adora’s been able to learn. Probably some sort of standard Firefly training or whatever. Typical.

"I can’t swim." Catra lays it out plain and simple, pointedly jerking her neck to the side to observe the lapping water line of the flooded city street. The entire thing was under water, crumbling buildings and rusted out cars framing the wide channel like a damn - all overgrown green from the years since the outbreak. Adora stands already thigh deep in the water, looking up at Catra with an incredulous expression. As if Catra was just being stubborn - as if she was being sinkable on purpose.

"You can’t be serious." 

Catra is completely serious. Her silence says as much, water sloshing away at the pavement in the awkward silence.

Adora scoffs and Catra’s teeth grit. "Look I’m sorry ok?- "

"Yeah, yeah. Just let me -…let me think this through." Adora says turning away to take stock of their environment. What could help them. What could be used as a potential asset. It grates Catra the wrong way now that whatever self possessed stupors had now come and passed and she finds she can hold Adora accountable without losing her nerve. Because honestly, what gives her the godamn right to talk down to her like a child?

"Well don’t blow a gasket on my behalf,"

Adora’s shoulders tense as she raises one hand to her brow, the other resting on her hip. "If we had just gone around- "

"Oh that’s what this is about. Alright- "

"We wouldn’t be in this situation."

"The car would’ve run out of _gas!_" She emphasizes the obvious reasoning of her point by leaning forward on her hips and jabbing her hands in the air.

"Well it doesn’t matter anymore now does it!?" Adora turns in the water, sending a small disruptive wave and wide ripples in the water, eyebrows knitted in frustration.

"At least we won’t die of starvation, in case you’d forgotten there isn’t any godamn food out there-!"

"Oh you’re right I’d so much rather be brutally murdered." Adora’s hands flash upwards and flop back down to her hips as she turns again in the water, searching for some alternate route.

Catra throws up her hands and paces a few feet away from the water line, crossing her arms and huffing in frustration. Anger mounting higher and higher. ‘We got out of there didn’t we? And you held your own.’ Adora doesn’t turn around and Catra pauses the aggregation of her pacing as she eyes the back of Adora’s camo jacket. "Oh come on, Adora…Real life isn’t a firefly debriefing. In real life you have to call some hard shots when shit hits the fan."

Adora still doesn’t turn around. "Psh, hard shots…is that what happened with Entrapta?"

_That’s it!_

"You have no right to judge me, princess." Catra spits with all the venom her spite is worth. "While you were sitting high and mighty in your ivory tower some of us had to fight for their godamn right to piss every day! And furthermore," Catra is practically shouting "You of all people should know how that’s like! But I dunno I guess it’s easy to forget yesterday’s news when you’ve been eating enough food to feed 5 starving fuckin families just so you can bench two twenty!"

Adora doesn’t once turn around to look at her and it makes her see red. She tightens her fists and burns eyeholes into the back of Adora’s head. Eventually, she exhales hot air like a dragon and throws up her hands, redirecting her eyes towards the weed ridden asphalt.

There’s silence for a good long while. Catra’s arms crossed across her chest, Adora staring sullenly in the distance when they hear the rev of an engine. The two of them simultaneously duck behind an upturned van, Adora kicking up a spray of white caps as she lunges out of the water. Up on the overpass Catra can just spot the damn thing, crossing across the bridge, a turret gun mounted on the hood. It’s the very same truck that rammed them off the side of the road.

Great.

It’s practically a tank in every definition of the word and Catra strains her eyes to see if she can get a body count on any ground patrols. Stoically, she notes that there doesn’t seem to be anyone else around other than the truck until -_ ratatatatata!_ The gun shoots off, flashing and spitting bullets at something just out of eye sight. But Catra can’t ignore the blood curdling screams. Whether conscious of it or not, she ends up pressing ever so slightly closer to Adora’s backside. Her arm resting on the van just above what would be Adora’s peripheral view.

It takes way too long for the truck to amble off, lazily rolling into the distance and eventually out of view. Catra takes a minute, another, and one more for good measure before she sits back on her heels and breathes. Adora just sits there before letting her head fall slack between her shoulders and drawing in a weary breath, the echo of their anger fading like thunder over the horizon.

"Come on," Adora mumbles around her shoulder. "I think I saw a pallet I can push you on."

Well that won’t be demeaning.

__________

Catra grunts as she ambles up Adora’s shoulders and onto the overhanging catwalk above. She’s got a rigid grip on the plank boards but her neck still falls short as she growls and strains her muscles to pull herself higher. It’s no use though, she’s not high enough to crook her elbows over the edge. She huffs and hisses over her shoulder down towards Adora still straining on her tip toes. ‘This is as high as you can get me? Muscles just for show then?’ Adora grumbles intelligibly beneath her.

The edge of the boardwalk bites into her elbow as she tries to bear down harder and leverage herself. "_What?’" _She grinds out.

"I said maybe you should think lighter thoughts." Adora bites with a little more grit.

Catra’s mouth screws on her face as she glares in the path of descending light, glances down her front before she plants her boot on the top of Adora’s head and pushes herself up another foot with a solid definitive shove. Adora grunts as her neck angles to the side.

Her feet dangle and kick at empty air as she tries to swim against gravity over the lip. Both elbows knocked out wide as she clenches her abs and crunches up. When she’s finally rolled over and back flat against the board she huffs a swift and sordid breath that turns into a waning chuckle.

"Your welcome. Now get the ladder."

Catra rolls her eyes before flopping onto her side and bunching up her knees. "Aye aye Captain." The ladder’s heavier than it looks and Catra grunts as she sidles it down the side and it clanks down to the ground level where Adora looks up expectantly. "Hurry up."

Adora’s hands grip the metal and Catra holds the thing steady as it shudders under the consecutive foot falls of Adora’s steps. Hand over hand as she balances her ascent. When she’s up and righted she turns to Catra without warning. "How did you know?"

Catra shoves at the length of metal and ladder and watches it go crashing at an angle back down to the bottom. "Know what"’ She says, already turning away and rounding the cat walk’s corner around the exterior of the building they’re on. Adora hastens to follow. "About the ambush. How’d you know it was a trap?"

Catra stalls to a halt and blinks, but she doesn’t turn. Instead, her fingers pick at the window shudder she stands in front of, nails picking away at the decaying wood that groans and protests as she tries to open it and gain access. They’re pretty high up on one of the high risers. Not insanely so like one of the sky scraper’s back at capital, or the bell tower back at Boston, but unquestionably high enough for the fall to be fatal. The vines that curl and cling to the side are green and vibrant from the fade of spring, glowing and radiating in the set of burning sun. So much for getting out of the city before night fall…but Catra mulls over Adora’s question. How much could she afford to tell Adora before she just decided she didn’t fit the firefly brand and cut ties completely? For the longest time they’d had a silent agreement not to talk about these sorts of things. What would tip the scales? "Been on both sides." She settles on as she struggles against the prying wood.

But Adora’s persistent. "What does that mean?"

"It means…mind your own…godamn….buisness!" The window pries up and open in a explosive moldy cloud when Adora comes up on her other side and heaves up on the lip with  combined force.

"It was just a question, Catra."

Catra doesn’t turn to see Adora’s face shadow casted in the fading light. She doesn’t want to see those soulful blue earnest eyes that make her feel like she’s just kicked a puppy. It’s a low blow and it’s cheap and frankly Catra’s offended that Adora thinks she’s so easily won over after a fight. 

"Sure it was. Let’s just get out of this hell hole, ok?" Neither of them move as Catra angles away onto her opposite hip and keeps her hands resting on the sill in silence. Adora sighs as if thinking better of it all and speaks. "Fine. Ok."

Catra pats the sill resolutely with an awkward gung ho knock on the wood before she pitches her leg into through the entrance. It’s only when she’s turning back around to close the window after Adora when she’s yanked back by the neck in a choke hold and rammed thoroughly against the wall. "AGH! _Fucker!"_

Adora’s pitches into the room and grabs her assailant from behind as Catra’s face bites into moldy dry wall and splinter. The grip on her wrists and arm gone loose as the weight pulls off suddenly. She angles back, growling and sneering, arm and fist already pulled back to deliver a resounding gut punch to her attacker when-

"Don’t hurt her!"

"What the…" Adora’s got a good grip on the hooded figure still wriggling in her arms like a pinned fish but her attention wavers as she looks back and over her shoulder at the…the kid. The kid who can’t be older than 12 years old, standing at the entrance doorway of he room with a minuature bow grasped trembling in his small hands. His dark skin is caked in dust and grime, and his clothes are worse for wear. But his hair’s buzzed back to a fuzz on his head in a neat crop and he’s got a tender timid look about him like most kids his age did. Not that Catra would know, she’s never seen anyone younger than 15 outside the system in Boston.

_"Bow! Bow, run!"_ The hooded figure’s voice is shrill and pitched and Catra advances forward to yank the fabric back down the intruder’s head. The flare of purple cropped and cut on the top of her head is…garishly purple. It’s a girl. Around their age actually, give or take a few years. She’s just as roughed up and smudged as the kid but ten times as fiery and scrappy judging by the fire in her eyes and the persistence of her struggle against Adora’s lock on her.

"Don’t hurt her." He says again, more urgently, angling the projectile at Adora as he takes a half step forward into their space as if to state he meant business. Catra can only blink. 

"We don’t want any trouble." Adora says. "So if you can calm down. I can let you up and we’ll all be happy. Alright?"

"Adora.-"

"Catra, let me handle this.- "

"If Sparkles tells Robin Hood to put down the shiksa bobber away it’s all yours." Catra’s eyes don’t trail away from the kid who’s lip the faintest twitch. She doesn’t think he has the guts, but she’s seen the way a caged animal thinks. The way they look when they’re cornered. And this kid looks cornered. "Tell him to put it down." She insists with the edge of her voice. 

"Catra, leave him alone," Adora scolds while pinning Glimmer to the floor.

But Catra doesn’t trust them. On a half second trigger of her hand she pulls out the revolver and levels it at the back of the girl’s head.

"Catra!"

"Tell him to put it down, or I’m blowing your fucking brains out!"

"Catra, stop!" But Adora’s got her back turned on the kid, and she’s got no garuntee he won’t skewer her through in the back given any sudden movements. They’re locked tight in a standoff.

"Bow!"

_"Glimmer…_!" He starts to cry.

"Tell him!"

"_Catra, enough!_"

_ ‘Now!’ _

"Bow put it down!" She finally shouts out into the press of carpet. "Put it down, Bow. It’s gonna be alright. Just put it down."

The snot down his nose dribbles a little and he’s breathing through his mouth in a way that wheezes hollow and tin on the way out. But he listens, and lets the string go lax as he clutches the arrow and shaft close to his chest. Catra’s jaw stays taught. "Now kick it over." When he does Adora doesn’t ask as she lets the girl up to away from them on the opposite end of the room, something Catra becomes miffed at as she eyes the defensive stance and shifting eyes that jump from Catra to Adora, and then back to Catra.

Catra doesn’t trust them. Not even the kid- what was his name? Bow. Not even Bow who grasps Glimmer’s leg from behind and presses his tear soaked cheeks into the jean fabric and sobs open mouthed and silently wailing.

Adora glares at her but Catra doesn’t lower the gun. She doesn’t. Trust them.

Adora’s eyes trail back to Glimmer and the kid when she comes to terms with Catra’s insistence and sighs. "We got off the wrong foot." She says.

"No _shit."_

"Language Sparkles, you’ve got a kid to think about." Catra leers over the barrel of the gun, at Glimmer who grits and tensess as she brings her arm around the kid in a protective shield.

Nobody says anything for a moment then, the silence deafening as Catra pins the pair with her eyes. She doesn’t trust them. How many gags has she seen like this? Ones where the blood looked real or the bones seemed broken. Scams where the kid fuckin stabs you in the gut when you lean in to cover their shoulders with your jacket before making off with your ration cards, leaving you in the street to fend off the vermin all alone in the night. Adora was strong. And smart. But she’d never learned how to play dirty. Or at the very least never learned how to watch out for it. So it’s Catra’s job to recoup their losses. That is, until Adora, head lowered and hands up, steps in front of the gun so that the back of her neck rested up against the barrel. "I’m sorry about my friend."

The girls muscles don’t loosen, and Bow hasn’t stopped crying into the fabric of Glimmer’s clothes. But Adora stands resolute and open as ever. Shoulders curled and palms held open in front of her as she eases the tension down to something almost bearable again.

"We’ve had a long day."

__________

Catra sighed and eyed Glimmer who, despite her obvious and apparent distaste for Catra, seemed more or less won over by Adora. "So where were you two headed? You know before your group-…" Catra gestures with her hand remaining mindful of the kid. Him and Adora sit side by side on the floor of Glimmer and Bow’s hide out apartment block. The boarded windows and dusty light filtering in through slanted shaft that burn rectangles onto the floor. He’s pretty taken with Adora himself.

Glimmer purses her lips before responding to the ground "word is the Fireflies are stationed out west somewhere. All of us were gonna head out and join up with them before those bastards ambushed us." Catra scoffs and Glimmers eyes flash up to Catra who’s turned her face away to the irony of it all. In her peripheral Catra can see Adora’s spine straighten.

"Something funny?" Glimmer bites out.

"No, no. S’just a lot of people seem to be putting their faith in the Fireflies these days."

"Yeah, well maybe there’s a reason for that." Glimmer’s leaning off the wall and hinging on her hips, agitated and charged for a scrap.

"You think they’re just gonna let two kid stragglers leech on their food stores for free? No offense Sparkles but the pair of you don’t exactly look like soldiers."

"We’re looking for the Fireflies to," Adora interjects as she catches Glimmer’s blazing eyes.

"You are?" Bow looks up from his tinkering and Adora smiles reassuringly, ducking her hand down her shirt to pull out her silver Firefly pendant.

"All the way from Boston." It’s chipped and a little grimy, but leave it to Adora to have it polished to a T. Adora’s name studded into the metal. Catra rolls her eyes.

"You guys are Fireflies?" Glimmer splutters while Bow dances his fingers over the metal surface.

"We- "

"She is. I’m just the 2nd wheel." Catra sniffs and Adora casts a withering glare.

"Well that makes sense," Glimmer snorts.

"Fuck you, Glitter." There’s a purple flurry of motion as Glimmer pushes off the wall before Adora’s up and between them in a flash, arms splayed out placatingly facing Glimmer. Catra’s front brushes the scratchy cotton of Adora’s shirt back. Who even has the time to scavenge for purple dye these days anyway?

"Look, we got separated back in Boston and now we’re just trying to catch back up with them. We should team up. You know the city lay out better than us and I can get you an audience with their leader."

Glimmers eyes flicker and harden with mild suspicion. "You can do that?"

"Yeah, she’s a real hot shot with them." Catra mumbles. Adora ignores her. And Glimmer…Glimmer worries her bottom lip and stares at Bow who looks up with shining eyes. Eventually Glimmer blinks up. "Only way out through the city is the bridge."

Bridge. Yeah, she’d seen it. Crawling with hunters and bastards. ’It’s infested during the day but there’ll be an opening tonight.’

"How do you know?"

"We’ve been watching them for a week. They have their vices." Glimmer pauses before she says "you want out? It goes down tonight."

__________

Catra’s panting heavily, vaulting over barricades and throwing Adora ahead of her forcing her to move, move, move. Keep moving. Keep moving. She chants in her head. **_BAM!_** The shot rings past her shoulder, whizzing past her ears forcing her to reel back reflexively. Catra scans the darkness, eyes straining before she raises the revolver and - **_BAM! _**The body falls to the ground over the lip of an overhanging platform that overpassed the bridge wall. That’s where the needed to go.

"How do we get up there?" Adora pants, eyes flittering back and forth for some sort of ladder or crate they can clamber up.

"There on the bridge!" Fuck.

"Boost him up! There might be a ladder he can let down," Catra shouts already crouching behind a concrete barricade, leveling her gun at the hunter’s head - **_BANG!_** "Make it fast!"

Adora’s already herding Bow towards the base of the platform and shoving him upwards, pushing his feet up and over the lip as he scrambles frantically up and over.

"Bow!? How’s it looking!?" Glimmer shouts over the gunshots.

"Ah-! Ah! A rope! There’s a rope!"

BAM! A bullet clips the corner of Catra’s cover and she flinches, forearm shielding her eyes.

"It’ll have to do. Glimmer, you’re next." Adora motions for Glimmer and bends down so Glimmer can mount her knee before Adora launches her upwards so she can reach the dangling rope. Catra empties the burning metal shells from the revolver and feeds in the last 5 bullets into their slots. Rounding the corner she empties the chamber - **_BANG!_** A spray of blood. **_BANG!_** A pained howl. ‘Catra!’

"Move it! I’m right behind you!" Catra doesn’t allow her focus to waver, eyes trained on her next target -**_ BANG!_** Behind her, she can hear Adora grind her teeth but grab the rope anyway, Glimmer and Bow collectively hauling the brunt of Adora’s weight up onto the platform.

**_BANG!_ **

"Catra! Now!" Catra turns sharply and hears the hunters start to close in as she jumps and grabs the dangling rope, twisting her hand around it and hauling herself up. Adora’s hand reaching out to grip around her wrist - _SNAP!_

.

.

**.**

**.**

**.**

As soon as the ringing subsides Catra is blinking spots away from her vision, groaning and shaking her head frantically. Hearing muffled and foggy as she listens to her labored breathing shuttering in and out from her lungs. The expanse of her back throbs like a bitch but thankfully the back of her head avoided taking the brunt of the fall. At the very least she would't die from a concussion or blood clot to the brain.

"Catra!" Catra squints upwards through the blurring haze of her vision. Images swimming back and forth while she strains to focus the blackened shapes. She can see the outline of Adora, Bow, and fucking Glimmer - who’s pacing back and forth anxiously before she - that bitch. Without so much as a backwards glance she’s grasped Bow’s elbow and has hauled him away, running across the length of the platform and out of sight. Catra bears her teeth and growls, clenching her eyes. Of all the ways to go out…she turned her cheek against the asphalt, clenching her eyes shut resolutely when she catches sight of a fast approaching pack of hunters - guns cocked, knives drawn. Catra draws in a wavering breath. She'd saved one shot left in the chamber for…

...

Abruptly, hands up underneath her armpits haul her upwards and onto her feet, shoving her forward across the bridge. ‘Move it!’ Adora’s shouting.

Adora.

Catra blinks through the fuzz around the edges, lip pulled up in shock, Adora’s face hard and set. It gives Catra an untimely lengthy pause as she takes in the glow of the side of her face in the light flare. Bleaching white light casting her hair aglow and illuminating the contrast of shadow and unshakeable determination in the cut of her brow. She doesn't - she's not sure if she's still breathing.

"I said move it!" Adora accentuates her point with another harsh shove, jump starting Catra’s uncoordinated legs into motion. Adora’s presence never strays far as they run, jumping over car hoods and weaving across the length of the bridge when -

The bridge just. Ends. Crumbling asphalt and cable wires that have been ripped in two - the other end of the bridge reaching out to them across a mile long expanse over churning black waters below. She looks down and hinges her hips as far as she can to peer down at the eddies and white violent thrash of water like furious engulfing void that climbs in through the nose and chokes out through the mouth. The height - dizzying. The sound - violent and torrential as the current screams and howls and reaches for their lives. ‘Fuck!’

"We gotta jump!"

"No! It’s too high and you won’t be able to float if I’m weighing you down- "

"And the other option!?"

**_BAM!_ **

Shit. "No time to argue!" Before Catra can protest, Adora pulls her in from around the waist, sides tightly pressed up against each other before launching them into the freezing inky water below.

__________

Catra doesn’t know at what point she had lost consciousness. There were rapids, she remembers. And Adora, she knows. But she can’t recall when the godamn goose egg on her brow had bloomed. Catra groans as she re enters consciousness, the dull ache and throb of her body pushing the air out her lungs. That, and a bucketful of water. She turns claws her way onto her side and starts hacking in an effort to drain her lungs. Vaguely, she registers a soothing hand on her shoulder that rubs circles across her clammy skin. Soft touches that reassure and comfort before they roll her onto her back once she’s done vomitting half a gallon of river water up onto the rocky shore. Splayed out prone on the rocks she exhales lungfuls of air and drags back in greedily before she squints her eyes open. Adora’s face looms above her, silhouetted by the morning sun. Her hands are bracing either side of her head and her lips are slightly agape. Adora’s tight expression crumbles for a moment, features scrunching up in relief before she ducks her head and lets it hang between her shoulders. She huffs a weary water logged laugh. ‘First swimming lesson, don’t inhale the water.’

"Did we die?"

"Heh…almost. I didn’t think we were gonna make it after you passed out on me."

"How- "

"Glimmer! She’s awake!" Oh, this was just too rich.

Catra hears the crunch of rocks and gravel approaching and Adora looks up, the light illuminating the slope of her neck, water dripping off the stray wheat colored strands of hair from her pony tail.

"Ok good, we gotta get moving. I don’t like being out in the open like this- " She doesn’t have the chance to finish the thought before Catra’s fist solidly finds it’s mark on Glimmer’s cheekbone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	4. Summer IV (catra)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Liiiiiive!
> 
> I'm back! And with a whole new revision for the season of Summer! Please read at your liesure and be sure to read Summer in its entirety. I've made a significant number of edits in my absence to tinker and fix with my initial handling of the earlier chapters which I hope you get a lot of mileage out of before Winter IV drops in the near future (hopefully). Season 5 let's goooo!

Adora’s humming that godamn country song…again. "I’m not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow, ’cause nothin’s ever gonna be alright no-how…"

Catra groans. Ever since Bow had finally rigged up the stupid walkman Adora hadn’t stopped playing with it. It didn’t help that she only had one cassette tape either…or the fact that all it consisted of was country corn trash.

"No matter how I struggle and I strive, I’ll never get out of this world alive,"

"Shut up," she groans. "I can’t hear myself think." Catra throws the cloth square she’d been using to wipe down her gun at Adora’s face with a resounding empty smack upon impact. "You’re driving everyone up the fuckin walls with that thing."

"You love my singing," Adora quips as she tosses the cloth to the side and pulls the headphones down to rest around her neck, fingers playing with the cord. She’s pressed up close to Bow’s side so that he can hear the music while they prattle to each other like chicken hens to roost.

Catra just snorts.

"So do the clickers." She casts a cursory glance around their perimeter eyeing the foreground and wood run around them in all directions. It had been on Adora’s insistence that they stray from the well laid path - far away from the cities and deep into the wilder brush where the bramble thorns and undergrowth ran flat across the earth. And despite having lived all her life in a world overtaken by the green, it was stranger to Catra still when she walked through the pure wood. Finding herself surprised at that the fault in her chest beat so when the light shafted throughout the leaves come down from the boughs - nature, unhindered and free of the crumbling city scape and structure. As reclaimed and overtaken as life had become across wherever they traveled, she’d never set foot in a redwood not grown around the remains of the skeleton dead. She’d never breathed green and pollen in the thicket grove. Not like this, she thought as she sat cross legged on the green carpet and felt the soft mesh underfoot give way to the press of her body. Silence never silent as she listened to the clock of a woodpecker ticking away at bark somewhere in the canopy, a cricket rustle in the high grass. It might’ve been nice if she didn’t have to deal with the glitter bomb brigade. Speaking of which…

"Hey, Glim Glim. How’s that rabbit coming?"

Glimmer’s face still sports one hell of a bruise on her upper cheekbone and nose bridge from where she’d hit her that day on the beach. It’s with a twisted self possessed satisfaction that Catra notes the blossoming purple flower puts her flurry pixie hair to shame when her face morphs around an uncomfortable degrading sneer.

"Well it would go faster if you leant a hand." The red seam and yellow hue marring the scorning grimace Glimmer shoots in her direction on the far offshoot on the edge of their makeshift camp.

"I caught it."

_"Adora_ caught it." Glimmer clarifies. "You just happened to be around when- "

"We went out as a group, Glimmer." Adora interjects, the muscles in her face unchanged and unassuming as she stares insistently at the walkman’s interface panel and plays with the dial - much to the kid’s enamored delight. Catra’s hands tighten around her biceps as she forces her glare to offshoot into the tree line as if to set them ablaze.

"Well if we’re taking credit, I was the one who suggested we hunt them in the first place." Bow quips as he leans up to roll the dial with his pointer finger with intrigued curiosity. 

"So really, Bow’s the one we should all be thanking." Adora says. 

Catra rolls her eyes and stands up.

"And where are you going?" Glimmer drawls in a way that makes Catra want to punch her again.

"Perimeter check." Catra bites over her shoulder, Adora already scrabbling up to stand as she steps forward. 

"You don’t have to go alone- "

"Old habits die hard." Catra growls into the bush that envelops her from all sides and vision. She doesn’t even look back over as she continues marching forward, only able to listen to the heft of Adora’s impatient huffing and the shuffle of her movements trail her further and further away from the patch of green grove.

"Catra! Wait! Seriously we need to stick together!"

Catra ignores her.

Adora follows.

"Catra," Adora persists. "Catra! Will you just - _hold on a second_."

"_Why?_ So I can listen to mommy and daddy fight over me some more? No thanks." Catra brushes past the curtain of branches and bursts out the other side, the tell tale sound of Adora’s stomping footsteps rampaging through the thicket like a deaf elephant. Catra huffs and keeps walking, hoping her persistence can out stand Adora’s bull headedness.

"Catra- "

"Go back to babysitting, Adora. I’m not in the mood." Because she’s not. She hasn’t been in tune with this entire development where Catra had become the designated door mat for the twilight tagalongs that had somehow -besides Catra’s understanding - managed to latch onto Adora’s sensible nature and secure a spot piggy backing their way to Colorado on a free lunch ticket. A lunch ticket Catra knew someone would have to pay, in food, in supplies!…fucking Adora. She didn’t care if the kid was a fair shot, he was a liability. And Glimmer!-

"So when will you be?"

Catra pauses. Fists clenched and annoyance brimming the sides of her patience like tepid roiling waves. "What." She grinds out.

"In the mood." Her voice, small and…Catra turns around to look at her. "To - I don’t know. To talk?" She tells herself to resist, to do herself a favor and keep walking. Go somewhere far away so she doesn’t have to look at that scrunch and set of Adora’s eyes that crinkle like they used to in the dark of their dorm bunk back in Boston. She looks washed in pale dim rain filter against the pane of the windows, speckled drops peppering her face as she gazes back at Catra, her hair brushed across the pillow as she reaches out. Catra pulls in one expansive breath before she turns and looks at the blonde’s figure now, stood a healthy distance back and half emerged from the bush, smaller in scale when Catra sees how easily dwarfed she is by the green and growth. She straightens, but doesn’t falter as she leers down her nose. It’s that kicked puppy look that she hates. Hates because she’s got no right to pull this bullshit on her - without consulting - without asking! To take on a 12 year old’s appetite and the embodiment of a walking migraine on a cross country trek to God knows fucking where! - …Then again, Adora had always held that position for the greater part of their lives…why stop now? Catra’s watches the way she fidgets when she knows Catra’s in the right, picking at the flap of the army green that hangs flat and open down her waist and rolled up her on her forearms. It’s weird. Catra decides…how natural it is to envision Adora in H.O.R.D.E black and kevlar rather than firefly green. How easy it truly was to fall back into designated patterns.

She huffs and turns away to glare along the tree line and up at the sillhoute of the leaves up above, the rustle of wind and breeze shuddering the limbs above. "When you’re not my problem anymore."

Because Catra hates to admit she’d like Adora to be something other than her waking nightmare again.

…

"What the fuck is that?"

She bristles. "That. Is your queue to leave me the fuck alone," already moving to take her next step when - 

"No. You ego maniac. _That."_

Catra turns.

…oh.

__________

"And it was just open?"

"No, we rigged a c4 and blew the door off the hing- "

"_Ugh.." _Glimmer groans already turning away into another light muddied pocket of darkness.

_"_Well what do you expect!? The door’s made of fucking iron! If you ask stupid questions you shouldn’t be surprised about getting stupid assed answers- "

"Guys." Adora’s ponytail swings in the stream light, stray hairs curling across her shoulders when she stares Glimmer and Catra down like petulant children. "Come on."

But Catra can’t ‘_come on.’ _She can’t fucking see. It’s dark and chilled down here, the inkling of splattering water running a leaky pipe plinking and echoing somewhere down the hallways they find themselves in. The bunker was bigger than she thought it would be. And dark. Discovering the depth of its pitch expanse when she and Adora unfurled the vine and camouflage from the storm door outside to reveal…whatever this was. 

"This place is huge." The kid, who hangs off of Glimmer’s leg, rasps in youthful awe with his head tilted back on the axis of his neck - craning back as he looks up at the stock shelves lining the wall he stands under. and Catra admits that he’s right. It was huge. And deep. The corridor paths run down another set of stairs and through the open roofed chambers of pipe and boiler rooms when she eases the creaking door hinge of the only other exit in the room, the dusty floating particles of rainbow haze speckled like sober static. It must’ve been an old sewage systems unit or…maybe some dooms day prepper’s dream come true - because honestly - the place was rigged. Shelves of preserves, rooms full of bunks and empty cots. Easily defensible. Invisible. Underground for the greater lengths of it from what she can tell. So where…- 

"We don’t know how far it goes." Catra addresses Adora who’s still visible in the slant of light that filters in pale through the doorway in a way that she can see Adora bite the inside of her cheek. Her fingers dug down into the space at her hips as her chin inclines down to the fabric at her chest in thought. Steeped in contemplation.

"What? Afraid of the dark?" Glimmer smirks over her shoulder as she loots around somewhere Catra doesn’t care to look at. She growls and fists her hands by her sides and dug in to fleshed palm, but trains them to release before leering back over her shoulder when she speaks low and measured, easy. "Lot’s of things in the dark that would eat your face and then use him as a toothpick.’ She nods at the kid, plastered to Glimmer’s side. ‘I’m trying to do both of you a favor."

"By being an ass."

"If that’s how you want to put it." Catra smiles venom only to be cut off by Adora’s scolding glare. 

"Behave."

Before Catra can form a rebuttal there’s a shout, tin and pitched like a keel call. "A map!" The kid exclaims.

Adora stands idle for a moment before shouldering past Glimmer and steps towards the kid who’s shuffled a collection of papers across the asphalt of the cot lined walls. ’What?’ Catra approaches behind at a slower cautious pace before inclining the raise of her chin so she can see amidst the dreary light. As he’d said, it was a map of what appeared to be the sewer system. And it was…extensive. Through the dim and what Catra can see the tunnels ran adjacent only a couple feet deeper, but spider webbed wide and ranging across the earth in long reaching shaft tunnels jaunting angled and rigid by a charted grid mesh. The surface of parchment was scored and marked with indecipherable notes and water marked stains, but it was undeniably a guide to the caverns that laid in wait below.

"Look, I think we’re here," he points out and lays his finger on a blocked out section labeled in some chicken scratch Catra can’t determine at this distance.

"Yeah…yeah, Bow you’re right." Glimme says. "And look here, there’s another exit way over here." Her finger travels an arc and radius to an opposing outlet on the leftmost edge of the paper, finger nail jabbing at the crisp crinkle as she sets the mark. "I think this system stretches 50 miles underground. Minimum."

"Um.." Adora leads not following Glimmer’s meaning.

"- I think we could take these tunnels all the way to the other side." Glimmer says as she stands and paces with the sheaf of papers grasped in her hands towards a better light source. The fluttering and warble reaf of the sheets dancing fast on the wings of her hastened updraft. "Yeah…yeah, this could work. Look, if we’re around the water tower we saw earlier and we follow this offshoot here for at most 5 miles, give or take, we-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." Catra interjects as she all but pushes past Adora who’s followed Glimmer in an attempt to keep pace with her fast electric train of thought. "Hold on a second alright. First off…_Why?"_

_"_Come on, think about it. We’re underground. We’re not out and vulnerable like we would be up surface. There’s food. _Nobody’s_ down here.- "

"Exactly." Catra says. "Nobody’s. Down here. Why do you think that is?"

"I don’t fucking know- " she follows, the strain in her voice ebbing towards a shrill break. "They got run out, they moved on.- "

"Got run out by _what, Sparkles? _Think. Use that purple pixie head of yours and think about all the godamn things that could’ve run them out. Disease. Hunters. Infected.- " 

"Alright, Catra- " Adora tries as she tries to reign in the rising tones of her voice. But Catra rounds on her and spits fire with her next words.

"Am I the only one here concerned about the literal 12 year old we’ve got tagging on this little adventure?"

"You know what bitch!- "

"Glimmer.- "

"You know you can be as big as a fucking pain in the ass as you want, but the second you bring Bow into any of your shit- "

"I’m trying to save him from _you _asshole!- "

"Catra.- "

Glimmer all but lunges for Catra before Adora can even finish, and it’s only on her instant reflex that trigger her to action and have her bent over ready to take the impact to scrap it out nice and old fashioned when - Adora beats her to it, materializing in front of Catra instantaneously on queue to brace Glimmer by the shoulders and eclipse the two from each other with the bulk face of her form, feet planted solid and wide root at the base of her stance to holding true and steady. "Enough!"

"Yeah, enough." Catra jeers from over Adora’s shoulder and peels laughter when she catches Glimmer’s eyes.

Adora’s voice is hard and wired when she speaks this time. "_Catra."_

Glimmer shakes free from the grip on her arms with such ease it makes Catra think Adora hadn’t been trying very hard to restrain the shorter girl in the first place. But Adora doesn’t step away from between them, her shoulders rising in agitation and loss at what to do. "You know it’s not a good idea." She challenges. If she couldn’t punch Glimmer’s lights out maybe she could force her through Adora’s unofficial authority over them all. 

From where she stands she can’t see Adora’s face with her stood back first like this, but she can read the set of her shoulders that remain tense as if to fight off another attack from Glimmer, eyeing the other girl cautiously and keeping Catra penned in at the same time with her back to the wall. Catra bristles at how maneuverable she was in the flash and fury of action and chastises herself for letting herself be cornered so - eyes burning into the green knit of Adora’s army shirt in retribution. But then she speaks.

"I’m not saying it’s not risky…"

_Motherfucker._

"Oh come on!" Catra throws her hands up and turns her back to pace the frustration in a right whirlwind circle of frustration. 

"Catra, Glimmer has a point." Adora turns towards her on the axis of her heel at side face, come to placate her with bullshit excuses. Catra bristles at the thought of being won over by such a cheap price. "We wouldn’t be out in the open and I find it hard to believe if people _were_ still down here they’d leave an entrance like this unguarded."

"Because something down there _killed_ them!- " Catra overrides in one last insistent bid to be heard.

"You don’t know that."

"I can make a very good educated guess, Adora!" She growls furiously, fisting her hands to stop them from shaking. "You don’t know what happened here. And if you keep running this horse into the ground you’re going to find out. And that, is something I don’t think you want, _princess_!"

Adora’s placating posture grows rock rough and stiff as her shoulders rear up when she tightens the muscles in her back, the cut and weight of her gaze going dim and shadowed by her tense defensive stance. The way the light eclipses her from the open door makes Catra aware of the vibrant pulse of silence that pushes down Catra’s throat as she bears the brunt of its weight. Adora is firm and unbroken when she speaks. "I’m not putting lives at risk because of your ego, Catra."

"It’s not ego!" Catra shouts, breathing statically as she arches forward, bristling and seething furiously. Glimmer’s gone quiet in the corner of her hindsights, having been pushed back by the torrential force of the tornado that passes over them, the eye of the storm buffering above like the grey winds that kick up and flow gritty blinding dust in the wind. 

"Not mine anyway." She spits.

…

When Adora speaks, she faces her fully with those shining grey blue eyes that have the hard lined grit that means she’s resolute to make up her mind. And it’s only the barest tell tale crease at the crook of her brows that reads bruising and pleading which gives Catra pause. "I’m not going to argue this with you, Catra…’ She turns away so she can’t see it. ‘I’m doing what I think is best."

…

…

…

"We don’t have any light." Catra grumbles.

In leui of the bitter silence Bow - the fucking twerp - takes the opportune moment to clear his throat from an off shot corner of the room where he holds up a box tilted and torrid in his smaller arc length. The contents of which chaff and clink as the industrial grade material of each car sized battery pack flash light bump against each other in the box.

Catra groans.

__________

The barricade falls sharp and clanging in between them when the trap triggers. And despite all of Adora’s scrutinizing analyzation and Glimmer’s open bared and excruciating anxiety - and Catra’s own rejection of the entire situation as a whole…nothing can even begin to make the wall budge. 

"It’s no use." Catra exhales as she leans both palms down on the window bars searching into the dark on the other side where Adora’s face swims into view of the dust and light beam of her flashlight. The sweat on her brow plasters strands of her hair to her forehead, and her shirt collar is wetted in down the fabric of her front from the sprint they’d been running within the first hour of entering this godamn hell labyrinth of _infected_. Catra’s lips quirk through her restrained huffing as she makes knowing, self satisfying, eye contact through the slits in the wall.

Adora breathes one thorough exasperated huff. "_Don’t."_

"Don’t have to." Is all she returns.

Glimmer’s head follows next a few feet down as the shadow of her face cuts into view. "No. No we’re getting past this. Adora. Help me with this- "

"Give it up, Sparkles." Catra jabs as she lets her arms go locked straight on the bars separating them and leaning into it. "It’s not budging for a pampered brat like you,"

"Shut up! Just shut up, for once in your life just shut up!"

"Oh that’s nice, Sparkles. Real nice. You know I’m the one- "

"You are such a fucking pain in the fucking ass- "

"Who advised _against parading around in this fucking death trap- "_

_"How in the fuck does Adora deal with your fucking- "_

_"In the first Godamn fucking place!"_

_"_Everyone just calm the fuck down!" Adora’s voice grates in a way that strains and wobbles on the pitch. Catra falls back and lowers her head in annoyance.

"Guys…?" The kid’s been quiet through most of this, she’ll give him credit. But the winnowed tones of his voice carry wiry and concerned from behind her when she-

"Fuck. Adora- " The telltale guttural scream rips open the depthless echoes through the dark into the space and shadows Catra can’t discern even as she jams and slashes her flashlight across the dark like the slice of a knife through water in search of a source. 

Adora hastens quickly at Glimmer’s arm, already shepherding the smaller woman alongside the length of the wall as she scans the room for exits. "No. Wait! Bow!- "

"No time, Glimmer. We gotta go." And then to Catra through the gap, eyes locking hard and steady in a familiar grip she remembers well from morning military drills. It gives Catra the briefest of pauses as she rails into the stretch of wall. "- We’ll meet you on the other side." Catra ceases to breathe through her nose as she locks on to Adora’s gaze, hard and determined, before she exhales it out with one swift breath.

"Just make sure you make it to the exit."

Adora knits the seam of her lips together in a thin line as she nods, reaching up then and grapples at the front of her shirt pocket. Bringing forth the sheaf of paper that marked the map layout and shoving it through the gap into Catra’s open scrambling hands.

The telltale click clack rockets off the sides of the walls, it’s flurrying footsteps falling heavy and cantering down hall and cement. Adora’s eyes break away as she pull one final insistent time at Glimmer’s arm as she steers them into the abyss. "You keep him safe!" Glimmer yells one final farewell from the shadows as her and Adora are finally lost to sight, the sound of their footsteps radiating down and away like reverberating ripples.

…

…

…

…

Catra falls against the wall when she’s certain they’ve passed out of hearing rangeand haven’t been mauled to death, pressing her forehead to the chilled metal and holding fast to the bars. When she opens her eyes she straightens the length of her spine first, locks her shoulders into place before turning to face the 12 year old boy stood lonesome and timid in the vacuum of dark. The fit and hang of his oversized shirt collar reaches down his neck so that she can see his fragile build stretched across the slender frame of his chest and limbs. The bow slung across his chest is practically a toy.

"…Shit." She groans as she shuts her eyes and tilts her head arching to the dark ceiling above. When she rights herself her voice is resolute and emotionless. "Come on." Pushing off and already rounding the corner of the next hallway, the sound of the kid stirring to awkward aimless action like a chick after the hen when he rouses to follow. "And keep up." She instructs hard and urgent with wide reaching strides.

His voice is small when he’s prompted to speak, like a junior cadet’s first day on inspection. "Ok."

"I mean it." She grinds out once before she locks eyes on his in the dark with one heavy transmittable gaze, the glint of her eyes and brow cutting like the flash of her torch in the dark. And she does. Mean it that is. She’s always known that, she thinks as she turns away again and forces forward with the drop of her mouth.

"…Ok."

___________

Catra pulls out her arm like a bar across the kid’s chest. Her palm splayed out across his chest and left shoulder as she careens him to a keening halt around the edge of the hall corner in the dark and dim. His breaths puff in and out of his mouth as he expands and hunches slightly over Catra’s extended arm, his hands reached out and gripping onto her forearm for support as he huffs and clutches down on the muscle of her forearm. Catra’s own chest expands and shrinks with the rhythm of the heartbeat she can hear pace in her ears and temples like a drum march.

Slowly, Catra brushes her head up against the wall and up round the cut of the wall. 

The light shafts and beams straight and illuminating in the dark, bleaching out the darkness so she can take stock of the caged cement block chamber they’ve accessed. It’s a bigger chamber than the others, opened up into a chunnel pipe that runs a concrete river bed husk down the center in a hollowed semi circle trench. And then she sees them. It’s only two of them. Twitching and riddled with spasms as they float aimless and idle. Directionless…

Catra pockets the revolver before turning away.

The kid’s eyes are wide and bug eyed when she look at him and brings up her pointer to her lips to silence him before gripping the edge of his neck and leaning him in. "They can’t see us. But they can hear us." She breathes close to the shell of his ear, low and hushed like the rustle of grass up topside in sun. "But they’re stupid…" She says before pulling back. She pours as much meaning and caution into her eyes as she connects her eyes to the kid’s, hoping he has enough sense to stay calm and let her take lead. His timidness, though insubstantial, assures her enough when she leans away and holds their connection rigid in the tension.

Catra shifts her gaze down and about them, squatted down and bunched up on the ground as she looks around for something - something solid and with heft. When she tracks and hones on the wayward brick lying prone on the ground nearby. Perfect.

It’s weighted and dense in her hand as she scales the brick in her hand. One last glance casted the kid’s way before she turns back to the corner’s edge and readies her breath. When she hefts the brick in a bowing arch down a separate hall branch the resound and echo of the impact sends the infected into a frenzy and stumbling erratic gallop into the unseen folds of the sewers. Catra smirks.

"Alright. Now we’re in business," she’s already standing to a full extended rise as she looks back towards the kid, reaching out for his shoulder to shepard him quickly on their way. "Come on, kid - " Catra’s gut folds itself inside out as the pit in her gut opens and swallows her at the sight of the advancing shadow lumbering and spasming its way towards them, jaws and teeth clicking voraciously - spittle spraying as it screamed and locked on it’s target! -_ "Look out!"_

It’s reflex that guides her actions. Reflex that shoves him back and out of the clawing hands that have gripped him around the shoulder and neck - drawing him back towards bloody gnashing jaws. She doesn’t even think as she rails forward and lunges, beating at the brain and skull heavy with the bulk of the flashlight, up and down on the soft spot of the fungal head space. Where the eyes used to be. Where the fungal virus hosted and operated the body apart form its host. Blood spraying and explosively spewing forth in a violent red deluge as she brought down the torches casing again, and again, and again with the heave and force of her ragged breaths. The beam of light flashing and careening through void of violence of what and all she can’t see or understand. It hardly matters when the thing falls to the ground on the fifth go, it’s limbs falling down to it’s sides, followed by the crunch and caving of its knees, the ragged remains of the hoodie it once wore torn down it chest where she can see its boiled skin…give way to human flesh lower down its collar. Catra breathes and stands over the thing with either leg bracing both sides of the clicker’s body slumped over on side, with both arms flayed over its head and twisted so the hips fall limp beneath her as she pants and tries to swallow the dry panic that had accumulated in the flurry of the encounter. She blinks, before she looks down at the flashlight in her red stain hands. And…reaches up with the edge of her sleeve and rubs once at the seeping brain mesh that clings to the plastic grade casting on the flashlight. Red and tint of pink hue cast down awash the remains of bloody pulpy fungal carcasslit up by the filter ofglowing hellfire and stained church window fragments across the clicker’s mangled body.

And then, to Catra’s horror, the kid breaks down and cries.

"Fuck. Ok." Catra flusters as she steps over the hulk of clicker and avoid the growing puddle of oily ink seeping now underneath. When she steps up close to where his head stands up to her middle her hands hesitate to rest down on his shoulders. The sight and stench of iron on her fingers giving her pause as she considers the paint and wipes her hand down on her shirt front before reaching back out with a drier hand. ‘Come on, kid. Come on.’ She tries placing two, and then three, fingers resistant and awkward on the fabric of his hoodie jacket.

She’s not…she doesn’t know what the protocol was for this. There hadn’t been instructions for handling kids at the H.O.R.D.E, and Catra finds herself slightly inclined over a tearful sobbing child withering on the curl of his shoulders and down the shudder of his spine, his dark hands brought up to the soft skin where his fingers skitter over his tear stained face. Quiet quiet as the whimpers bubble up and down out his dribbling gaping mouth. Catra keeps her eyes open as she swings around and searches the darkness and pricks her ears, before she decidedly reaches out and steers the kid down the side of the wall where his knees bend and collapse down to the floor and seat. ’Alright…here we go, here we go.’

Bow doesn’t stop crying through it all.

Catra’s breathing stutters as she runs over the thought in her head. Panicking slightly but reigning in the shake and shimmer of the fear when she looks back up at the kid and squeezes his shoulders to get his attention. ’Does anything hurt?’ _Please._

Catra doesn’t get any response besides the feeble hiccups and stutters of his cries.

"Kid." Catra tries again. 

He sobs.

"Bow."

And then the silence softens and patters like raindrops to a close, Catra watching all the while as Bow’s hands trickle down into his lap. Catra’s panic doesn’t cease as his shiny brown mocha eyes trail up to her own, red rimmed and puffy at the sill of his eyelids, but the worst case scenarios rise in the back of her throat and burn her red.

"Bow. Listen to me." Catra’s fingers press into his shoulder to keep the tremble hidden from both of them as she stares down and grounds the kid from floating away again. "I need you to focus."

He blinks.

"…Does anything. Hurt."

_Please don’t be bit._

He swallows, the bob of is threat peeking up and riding back down as he breathes and let’s his eyes flit scrutinizing the dark. Looking somewhere below Catra’s chin and at the peek of her collar bone that she notes must also be splattered with a little red. She knits the seam of her lips together and holds her breath.

…

….

…….

"no,"

She exhales, but just to be safe she kicks back on her toes and squats in front of him to just above his eye level and lurches forward to roll the baggy fabric up to a cuff on his shoulders. Only then commencing her thorough check through by taking his smaller hands in her own and drawing them up straight in front of him so she can assess them. Running her hands, gentle and fluttering down his arms, prodding and testing by pinching here and there and squeezing down on his forearms firm but pliant at the soft inside. When she’s satisfied with his silence and compliancy Catra exhales, slow and drawn out as she lets her head go loose and shuts her eyes in relief. ‘Ok. Good.’ Good.

He’s not truly stopped crying from what Catra can tell. The drip and run of water still streams down and wets his cheeks like a sticky wash. She almost indulges in the urge to pull up her sleeve and grab his chin to rub and wipe the mess away. - But she doesn’t. Rather in favor of rocking back on her heel down to seat and stretching out her legs in an open V a little ways apart from his shoulder. Turned away as she strains and listens to the rustle of distant skittering clicker feet. They’d go when she was sure he wouldn’t start blubbering like a dinner bell.

But his breaths keep puffing, despite his best efforts. Twisting the fabric of his pants in a swirl before he starts scrabbling at his own fingers, wringing them incessantly as they pale and stretch. Catra sighs.

"- Look." She turns way even further, shoulders set rigid and stiff to the spot though. "I’m sorry ok."

…

…

….

"what?" A sniffle.

"I’m sorry." Catra repeats, shoulders bunching up around her to where she’s sure he couldn’t manage to get a good look at her awkward twitching. She clears her throat. "You know for -…"

"…"

"For," _almost blowing Glimmer’s head off- "_how we started off."

"…"

"It wasn’t personal."

She’s not sure if he’s gonna answer for a while. The silence leeches and curtails her self assurance to the point where she’s going to just forget it and hope her conscious follows suit. When-

"….I’m sorry I left you"

Despite it all her voice goes quiet. "That wasn’t your fault."

"I’m still sorry," he whispers into his lap, the edge of his wooden bow shaft poking into Catra’s own shoulder. She sighs.

"Thanks."

The water pipes trickle somewhere in the dark, a puddle and ripple blossoming unseen as Catra and the kid sit amidst the particles of rainbow dim. So bleary and swimming while the odd pair, sat not an inch apart from each other in void, measure and pace. their breaths to each other’s pulse. They sit like this for a time, Catra scoring the map down and over trying to orient what their next move was. She doesn’t even want to think of the bullshit Adora’s gonna ream her for when -

"Catra!?"

_"Bow!!!?"_

  
Later, when they’re back up surface and scrounging for shelter at the set of day, the kid doesn’t say a word about his close brush with death. Much to her relief. She didn’t need Glimmer’s bullshit on top of Adora’s. So Catra just stares at his back across the camp where Glimmer helps him layer the earth with pine padding as she unrolls the cot slag onto the grass, the back of his neck speckled with a little red and hue stain as his only reminder.

__________

"I don’t despise you you know." Glimmer says, hands jammed in her pockets as she stares at the fire pit Adora had dug out earlier, flames licking at the tinder and sparking up into the air. Catra glances up from the arrows she was feathering. Fenneled shaft wings to balance out the length of lance so that it could glide and glance off the trajection. Adora had asked her to do it…as a favor…for the kid. And well…well she didn’t have anything else to do besides help Glimmer boil their drinking water and she wasn’t about to do that. She glances over at Glimmer. Back down to her arrows.

"Well I hate to break it to you Shimmer but you’re not really up in my top 5 right now."

Adora and Bow are both asleep nearby, the kid’s head resting in Adora’s lap while Adora leans her neck back against the tree she’s propped up against. The lines of her face smoothing out in the glow of the fire.

"I know. I don’t," Glimmer’s face wrinkles and she sighs "I don’t blame you."

Well, this was unexpected.

"What, are you dying or something?"

"Excuse me.?" Glimmer deadpans.

"I dunno, you’re confessing all your transgressions and shit. Seems like something a dying person would do or whatever."

Glimmer just scoffs "well, you know some people are just emotionally healthy and like to talk about shit before it starts messing with them."

"Oh and you’re one of those people?" Catra chuckles at that.

Glimmers eyes sharpen and she opens her mouth to read her the riot act, breath already drawn and aimed, but she cuts short. Exhales her entire lecture in one giant huff - deflating as she turns her head to the side. "Look I-…if it feels like I’ve been giving you a hard time- "

_"Feels?"_ Catra really shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as she is.

Glimmer glares at her dispassionately for a long drawn out pause. "…If I’ve been giving you a hard time it’s just because I think you need to lay off Adora. She plays it cool but she’s not a tank, you know."

Catra stiffens and bristles on edge. "You don’t know what you’re talking about."

" I know Adora doesn’t deserve to be running herself ragged every night while she lets you push her around all godamn day. Just because she feels like she owes you - I dunno, some weird fucked up apology for some shit you two haven’t talked out?" Catra thinks back to how Adora would always be first to set up camp. How Adora was always so keen on skinning the meat every night they’d been on the road since Boston. Catra always pegged it to Adora’s obsessive demeanor - that she thought Catra would somehow fuck it up. She shakes her head.

"You know if I wanted to sign up for a couple’s therapy session- "

"Do you even realize how much she defends you?" Glimmer’s voice takes an edge that Catra completely and entirely loathes.

She bristles. "As I recall you abandoned me _and_ adora to a fuckin gang of rapists and murderers. From my point of view you’re in no position to criticize me based on morality."

That shut her up. "I didn’t…_want_, to leave you."

Catra leans on her elbows, arrow swinging in between her pointer and index fingers. When she speaks her voice low and soft. "I find that kind of fucking hard to believe."

"We don’t like each other. That’s clear. But I don’t…I don’t want you dead alright?"

Catra breathes out. If there’s a lie Catra hasn’t caught it, and she leans back scanning Glimmer’s face for a telltale twitch or shade. Nothing. There’s a long pause while Glimmer mulls over what to say next.

"Bow…I’m all he has. Now that everyone else is…" she trails off, staring down at her hands. "You…you do things that you never thought you could do for the people you love to…to do right by them." She pauses. "To do right."

"There are some lines," Catra mutters.

…

"If it was you and Adora would you have turned back for me?"

A log on the fire fractures and succumbs under the heat.

…

…

…

Eventually she sighs, soft and resigned. "For what it’s worth I’m glad you guys didn’t drown…Bow would’ve never forgiven me."

The fire crackles between the two of them. The shadows dancing on both of their faces - neither working up the nerve to get a good look at the other.

"…you know we still hate each other, right?"

"Heh," Glimmer’s chuckle trails off into a tired smile. "Yeah, yeah I know."

__________

Catra trods across the fractured asphalt, a hunting rifle slung across one shoulder and her pack on the other. Adora and her taking up the rear in silence…comfortable. Peaceful.

"Adora. Little help?" Glimmer’s voice sounds up ahead where she’s fumbling with a weather beaten road map. They’d been trying to figure out where the hell they were in relation to Colorado for days, walking westward hoping to happen upon any identifiable landmarks. So far, nothing. Adora, who doesn’t even seem conscious of it, briefly squeezes the inside of Catra’s elbow before she strides up ahead next to Glimmer. The skin where Adora's hand rested buzzes.

Catra turns her head. "Hey, pick it up dead feet." She says nudging the kid who’s started to drag his feet.

"I’m goin, I’m goin." He mumbles tiredly. Catra tells herself it annoys her.

"Well that’s just the problem buddy boy, you’re not. And I don’t need Glimmer hounding my ass when you get left behind."

Bow chuckles and peers up at Catra’s face with mirthful eyes. "Don’t you mean Adora?"

"Her too. So move it."

His pace picks up a bit but he stays close to her side, moving in a little closer to her inside arm so that they’re walking with each other instead of beside. "She’d forgive you…eventually."

"mhm," Catra grunts.

"She would. I don’t think she could stand it if you two weren’t friends."

A Firefly pendant glints in the fading sunlight, the wind whistling atop a mall outlet’s rooftop. "Yeah, well. We’ve known each other for a long time." Catra says dispassionately.

Bow is smiling down at his shoes. "You guys must be really familiar with each other then."

"Yeah, I gue- " She stops short when she sees the wryness in his smirk.

Catra eyes the kid for a moment and then shoves his head as he breaks out in laughter. "Hey, don’t act clever. I don’t like clever."

"S’funny. That’s exactly what she said."

"What did I just say?" He just laughs and Catra finds herself smirking despite herself, a hot and embarrassed feeling dusting her cheeks. She changes the subject, "you know this bow is getting a little too small for you. If we decide to hold up somewhere in the winter maybe I can- "

Catra cuts off as the high pitched scream of an infected lights up her anxiety, hands fumbling with the rifle slung across her shoulder just as- ‘CATRA!’

Bow goes sprawling across the ground, legs kicking and high pitched screams sounding out over the ravenous babble of the infected stalker that’s barreled into him. Catra’s fear spikes and she aims the rifle on the infected’s torso, eyes lined up in the sight - BAM! Her shot goes wide as she’s shoved to the ground, the hefty weight of an infected thrashing above her, teeth gnashing for her neck.

Catra’s panting through her teeth, hands scrambling and reaching for her revolver. Her head gets jammed down on the rocks as the fucking thing’s hands push her down. Uncoordinated limbs that won’t listen to her brain are scrabbling frantically. Panic filling her eyes with watery shock. Her hands scrabble and claw at the handle, fingers just barely hooking the grip. She lets out a guttural shout and shoves the nozzle of the gun into the damn things mouth and - **_BAM!_**

Her ears ring and she groans from somewhere deep in her throat, hot viscous blood splatters all over her backside. She’s blinded from the pain of it. Bow. She’s up on her elbows and shoving the limp body off her back, scrambling forward on hands and knees to where the kid’s got his forearm rested on the stalker’s jugular just keeping him back from ripping his face off.

Catra wastes no time. In two strides she’s already jamming the gun onto the infected’s temple. BAM!

Blood explodes out the side of the infected’s skull as it falls limp, red leaking and draining out onto the dirt. Catra pants and she kicks the body to over with her foot.

And then there was Bow.

Eyes wide, lip trembling, tiny whimpering sounds of anxiety tearing out of his throat. Catra doesn’t think when she reaches down and hauls him up by his jacket shoulder, head cutting up as she catches sight of more infected that must’ve been alerted to her shots. "Come on, come on. We gotta go." And they’re running. Running and shouting for Adora and Glimmer to go, go, go.

__________

Catra, despite herself, goes and checks on the kid once they’ve set up in what might’ve once been an office building. He doesn’t say much other than a quiet ’thank you,’ and leaves it at that. Catra doesn’t push it. She figures this is just something he has to get used to.

__________

Sunlight filters through dusted windows, little flecks of fuzz dancing down in the slanted rays. Catra leers up at them through her foggy stilted eyes. Splayed out on her back, looming somewhere in the dredges of sticky residual dream. It's a warm light that floods in and burns the black behind her eyes red. Iron red hot and she groans and grounds the buzz in her head, the palms of her hands come up to press at her eyes. Static particles. And fuzzy fuzzy headspace. 

ughhhh...gritty eye scum dry morning cotton mouth to swallow around...pull taught the muscles under her skin and wring them wrought with ache and strain and-

Catra's still limp and leaning over herself on the ground - stray hair poking from the corner of her mouth and dry dribble and all the entail of morning grief but - she's not standing 5 feet away from her. Arms folded loosely over her elbows, leaning onto window sill, the morning light setting her wheat colored hair aglow - strands of it escaping her hair tie in the most neatly haphazard manner which - Catra's not sure is really...possible. But she isn't aware Catra’s stirred at all, and she’s not - she’s not. smiling…but she’s not frowning either, and the worry lines around her eyes have smoothed out slightly.

" Hey, moony. Make yourself useful and go wake Bow." Catra's blear and hazy morning stupor jars abruptly - the alarm and shock lodged up in her chest and throat when Glimmer bemoans as she tends to the hot plate and boiling drinking water. Catra hadn't even noticed her.

"I dunno…maybe let him sleep in? It was kind of a wild day for him yesterday." Adora backs up against the sill, her backside leaning up onto the ledge now so her legs cross as they prop her up against the wall.

Glimmer snorts. "Now I know why you’re his favorite, it’s because you coddle him so much." Adora just snickers. And Catra takes the opportunity to turn away and escape this horrible situation where she has all these feelings that are distinctly neither anger or annoyance. Curtly finger brushing the mats out of her outrageous bed head as she strides briskly into wakefulness and away. Just - away.

To Catra’s surprise the kid’s already up and about, his back turned to her standing over by the window.

"Bow?"

__________

It's all too fast to register let alone understand. She’s on her back. She shouts. Small hands clawing at her face. Growling. Screaming. She thinks she hears Adora’s voice. And a gunshot. But all she can see are brown shiny doe eyes that have been turned bloodshot and feral. **_BAM!_**

His head explodes open and Catra’s front is painted red. Sticky and hot and - she's gonna be sick. But all she can do is scramble backwards on her hands, scrambling and kicking out and away from that - thing. Still writhing slightly and gurgling wetly on the floor.

The bow is still slung across his chest.

"Bow…?" Wet and keening.

Catra's head cuts up.

"B - oh god…" Glimmer. Fingers wrapped around Catra's smoking revolver.

"Glimmer," Adora’s voice wavers. Wobbly. Shell shocked. Uncertain as she inches towards Glimmer, her palms spread outwards.

"Glimmer what have you done?" It comes out as a high pitched whine. Whispering and so - **broken.**

Adora shuffles inch by inch. "Glimmer…Glimmer I’m gonna get that gun from you." Because she’s still holding it out in front of her, two hands quivering and floating in space like they don’t really belong to her. "Bow…" His name is a waning note in the morning light. His body a dead weight on the floor.

"Glimmer- "

"This’s your _fault." _Weak and wavering and - **broken.** She’s got a gun.

"This is nobody’s fault, Glimmer." Adora pleads and averts her gaze. Hands held up. The gun.

_"This is all your fault!"_ \- **broken.**

Catra doesn’t know how she finds herself in front of the barrel and Glimmer’s shining eyes, Adora’s hands gripping her shoulders so tight she can feel the nails biting into her collarbone - her own hand grasping Adora’s waist behind her. Glimmer’s lips are pulled back in a grimacing snarl. Tear tracks burning streaks through the dirt on her face. They make eye contact and all she can see is the flickering of a camp fire. A log that crackles and breaks under the burning heat.

She looks straight into her eyes.

The gun-

**_BAM!_ **

…

…

…

Behind her, Adora keens. Eyes burying deep into her neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to believe that Adora’s favorite genre of music would be anything other than true blue farm raised country. apocalypse or not.
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	5. Fall (Adora)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only goes downhill from here

Deep down in Adora’s gut she knows they’re running out of time. She can feel it in the air, how the leaves have blackened and the birds fall silent. How everything just seems to shrivel and die the further west they trek, winter marching down from the sky in overcasting droves of clouds. And on top of it all they still haven’t any real idea where they were going.

Adora shoulders the wooden bow, squeezing the grip softly as they walk. She’d wanted to leave the damn thing on his grave, because…well, just because. Catra had just stabbed her shovel into the ground and told her some desperate idiot would come around and pilfer it. Adora couldn’t say that she wasn’t right. Her grip tightened possessively on the handle and she tucks her chin down close to her chest.

Catra’s up ahead of her by a few paces, rifle balanced on her arm - one hand on the stock, the other on the safety. Her head is turned to the side so that her cheek is casted against the fading light, listening for the river. They'd been hoping to follow it upstream to a town or some sort of settlement. Just...something…

Adora trains her eyes on Catra’s heels.

_"We shouldn’t have marked them."_

She thinks back to how they’d stacked stones down on their mounds, bound broad sticks together to make a sturdy pair of crosses.

"_Someone’ll just dig em up for their clothes."_

It was crude and rudimentary, but Adora took comfort knowing that the work wasn’t shoddy.

_"It doesn’t matter.’"She clenched her fists. "They’re with their families anyway."_

At the very least, she felt assured the rain wouldn’t wash anything away.

_"You really believe that?"_

_…_

__________

"We should stop."

Adora stills to a halt and looks over the river, white water rapids that churn and thunder down the channel. Adora thinks about a fractured bridge. She looks over at Catra.

"It’ll be dark soon." There’s some semblance of annoyance in her voice which is nothing new, but when Adora meets her gaze she thinks she can also see worry lines.

"Just a little further. - "

"Adora." It comes out as an exasperated sigh.

"This is a big river. A town or something has to be close."

Catra says nothing when Adora turns her back to the waters.

"…I know you’re tired. I am too."

Catra scoffs.

"Not as tired as me apparently."

Something sharp and biting flares up in her chest. They keep walking.

The path they’re hiking isn’t fenced off and it’s more of a backwoods path than an actual trail. But it does the job, weaving them along minute by minute, slowly but surely winding up the length of the river’s cusp. Downtrodden undergrowth and aching feet. Chilly air and weary backs. A few moments into the silence Catra speaks.

"It’s getting colder." She comments.

She isn’t wrong.

"Game’ll start getting scarce."

…

"Not to mention ammo hasn’t exactly been - "

"What are you doing.?" Adora comes to a halt as Catra walks on a couple steps ahead of her. Something new and hard carrying her voice. The distance between them yawning and stretching indifferently.

Catra turns to look back at her, eyes hard and resolute. "Don’t tell me you haven’t considered how shitty everything is. Listen, I get that we’re on like a suicide quest or whatever. But- "

Adora turns her head away and exhales with force.

"-if you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of fucked. Food, shelter, defense, and all of the above wise."

"What do you want from me? We can’t do anything about it- "

"We can go south."

Adora bristles. Not this again…

"It’ll take us too far out of the way."

"You don’t even know where they are.

"I know they’re not in _fucking_ Mexico."

Catra growls.

"Do you even realize how bad the situation is? We got lucky getting out of the city, Adora. _Luck. _And it is going to run out if we keep throwing ourselves down this godamn rabbit hole!’ Catra brings her hands to frame her face. "I mean - it’s just insane! It’s - It’s delusional, you know." She chuckles sardonically and nods her head at her. "It’s fucking scary how brain washed Light Hope has got you."

"Oh my god." Adora pivots on her heel. Hands on her hip drifting further and further away. She can't deal with this shit anymore. Can't placate these - _tantrums _any longer.

"And after what happened to Bow,"

Something snaps.

"I mean - do. Do you even care?"

"Do you?"

Catra’s eyes are just as bloodthirsty and feral as the day Adora left. And Adora? All Adora can see is red.

The click of a hand gun. "Hands where I can see’m ladies. No funny business."

Fuck.

__________

Looking down at it Adora really couldn’t believe her eyes. Like, really honestly and truly just _couldn’t - _it was a whole fuckin town. Of _people_. Normal wonderful completely typical run of the mill people that didn’t try to stab you in your sleep. Rows upon rows of houses that branched and stemmed together…It was beautiful. It was - otherworldly.

"Impressed?"

Adora releases a quiet astonished huff blinking away her shock. She turns to Sea Hawk grinning "Impressed."

His voice is soft and nostalgic when he speaks, eyes crinkling up by his crows feet. "I can’t believe you’re actually here."

"_You_ can’t believe!?" He laughs, full body and all, his chest puffing out as he leans back - hand stroking that ridiculous mustache. God, he hasn’t changed at all. "How do you think I feel?"

He sinks into a series of chuckles and places a hand on Adora’s shoulder, drawing her into a front on front hug squeezing warm and tight and - familiar. Adora could cry from the heat of it. "We thought you were dead." Adora muffles her voice in his shoulder.

"Heh…sorry about that." He places two warm hands on the sides of her arms and leans her back so he can look at her. "Had to get away, y’know?" Adora wonders if she does. The Fireflies had seemed like the only option back in Boston. The only right thing to do. Even on that day swimming in the golden haze of the setting sun. Because even then she was just holding out her hand for a lure to snag on to. The glint of her dog tags. Name printed clearly on the surface like it was meant for her. But did she? Know that is. She nods regardless and brushes fussily at her shiny eyes

"Mermista?"

Sea Hawk brightens visibly. "She’s at the plant trying to get it up and running again. Don’t know when she’ll be back down but -‘ he laughs ‘boy is she gonna be surprised when she does!" Adora smiles.

"Ahem." Catra. "Not to be a buzz kill but you think we could finish the Firefly reunion when we actually get down there?" She’s standing a few feet away, arms crossed over her front and head inclined upwards as she leers at one of Sea Hawk’s men. On edge. Defensive.

If he notices he doesn’t say anything. "Ladies…" he says with a typical Sea Hawk flourish, signaling for one of his to bring something out from up ahead. ‘Your chariot awaits.’ Adora really was going to cry now.

"Oh god." Catra groans as Adora all but squeals at the bay brown horse that’s led out from the foliage.

__________

Time passes and Adora resigns herself to life at the township. Just until winter is over at least. So for days Catra and her are just set up in a beige stucco trying to process…everything. People milling about in the streets and their houses. Talking. Tending to gardens, children…just - living. Sea Hawk, thankfully, doesn’t ask too many questions - why they’re out here, where they’d been heading. No one does. In fact, there was very little talk of anything outside the township. ‘It’s a place to start over.’ Explained Sea Hawk, eyes growing cloudy and soft at the edges. 'Gives people a second chance.' All in all she appreciates it. The respective silence. The quiet understanding. Still, it sets her teeth on edge. The calm. The vulnerability. They’re used to sleeping with two eyes open between the two of them and now…now they’re sitting around a campfire listening to Sea Hawk sing one of his old shanties. It’s bizarre.

__________

Mermista, for lack of any better phrasing, loses her shit when she comes back to find Adora casually brushing down the horses in her stables. She’s just as flippant, just as cynical and weary worn as she was when Adora knew her as a Firefly. It’s good to see her. A couple days after the initial shock wears off she loans Adora an encyclopedia. ‘A welcome home gift’ she’d called it ‘You still like all that old junk right?’ It’s water damaged, written in, and ripped right down the middle of certain pages but all in all whole - filled with pictures of old and antiquated things of the past that haven’t served purposes in years. It’s the best gift anyone could’ve gotten her.

__________

On more than one occasion she volunteers to help Sea Hawk with perimeter patrols - make herself useful. But he insists she just sit down and relax. Soak in the scenes. It makes her legs itch and her muscles ache. It makes her mind rot.

__________

Catra takes to everyone surprisingly well. Adora knows she’s never exactly been a people’s person, never played all that well with others - and that was _before_ anyone ever tried to murder her in her sleep. So it takes Adora aback when she watches Catra helping out in the gardens or stocking food stores. Fixing a loose door hinge and feeding the livestock. It’s not like she has’t been de clawed of course. Mermista and Catra’s personalities for lack of any better phrasing…grate. But they share this little two person homestead and eat breakfast in the mess, and help fix what can be salvaged around the township and -. And it’s just down right domestic. Adora can’t even remember the last time they fought.

__________

She spends a lot of time in the stables. She likes that she doesn’t have to juggle a conversation with the bulky hind quarter of a horse when she’s brushing it down in the quiet of the evening. Swifty’s her favorite. Catra claims that the stables stink and that she hates it but she falls asleep in the hay while Adora finishes dishing out the oats.

__________

Eventually, Adora learns some of the customs and things people do for fun. Like, if it’s not too cold outside, Sea Hawk will sometimes haul out this big tarp and old projector and the whole township watches movies - _movies. _There’s only 3 of them and no sound but Adora isn’t complaining. It’s more than she could’ve ever hoped for. She doesn’t say anything for fear of scaring her off, but she knows Catra enjoys it by the way her jaw loosens and her shoulders go lax, the two of them sitting quietly in the back by the wall. Close.

__________

It’s nice. It’s _good. _So Adora doesn’t know why she can’t find a place to put herself in…_any_ of it. She looks at their clothes that are free of muck and dirt, their hands that lack any sign of dry crusty blood, and it feels clean but - in a sterile disjointed way. So despite the warm beds, warm food, warm clothes, and warm smiles…Adora just feels hot.

__________

The lights burn fuzzy and yellow from the bulbs strung overhead, folksy melodies and a lingering scent of cooked meat wafting in the air. It was a…a celebration Sea Hawk had explained. Some sort of ritual or festival the township practiced during their harvest season uhm…ahh…Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving…stores of food laid out on long tables. Children exempt from their classes. Music. Laughter. Adora exhales slowly to keep the throb of it all inside her head, neck aching, skin itching. Mind rotting.

She’s situated somewhere in the center of the mess hall on a clustered long table, packed in with all the other sardines. Adora can see Mermista at the head, juggling people’s complaints while simultaneously trying to keep tabs on Sea Hawk and his blood alcohol content. Not that she’s succeeding very well at either…all she does is roll her eyes.

Adora doesn’t know where Catra’s gone off to.

But she can’t worry about her right now, not when the people at her shoulders roar drunkenly and crowd in on her the way they do. Adora has to kick out her elbows just for squatter’s rights at her table space. A prickle of sweat is teasing at her hairline and neck and she coughs to clear her throat. Just to alleviate the phantom of preassure clouding her head.

But it’s all just kind of suffocating to be honest. She stares at the bird they’d carved up and put on her plate, still steaming from the spit they had set up, breast bone poking out from the flesh, white and glistening. And the ground underneath her sways as if they’re all on ship, a giant arc in the middle of the deep drowning ocean. She feels like she might be sick. Where was Catra? They usually handled these kinds of larger events together, if only to know a face.

Adora glances up and knits her brow, searching. Scanning the many faces and heads and mass of people when - there! A red bandanna pulled against a wild mane of burning brown. She's standing over by the food table where they've set up a giant keg. Figures. Adora has half a mind to go over and pull her away while she still can to prevent the worse case scenarios playing out in her head but...oh. She's talking to someone. A head shorter maybe. A touch paler. Softer. A girl. A really rather pretty girl actually. She's got a quirking clever smile and an auburn brown mane of hair and - and Catra's propped up against the keg, elbow resting on the barrel and jacket collar turned up. Drink in hand. Smirk, light and amused. She's got her chin tucked down and her eyes trailing lazily but Adora knows - she just _knows _she's anything but bored. She must say something funny or clever or something along those lines because the girl raises one eyebrow incredulously and grins before laughing. Catra's lips peel back over those white teeth and Adora's too far away to really see but, but she thinks her eyes just sparkle a little as she watches the girl go on laughing. She moves her hand down to graze the girl's elbow -

Adora stands abruptly, heedless of the people who look up at her…well there’s not really a word for how they look at her. But it’s hot. ’S’rry.’ They stare at her. And she turns abruptly to disentangle her legs over the bench. Shouldering past bodies. Clawing past them. ’S’xcuse me.’ She impacts into someone’s back and averts her eyes. ’Sorry. Sorry. I - please.’

When she bursts out of the open doorway it’s crisp. A splash of cold water to wake her up from the pressing atmosphere. She hunches over on her knees just to catch her breath from it. From that heat that just - _emenates_ from everybody inside. Climbing down her throat. Up her nose. Billowing out onto her face and making her eyes water from the intensity of it. This doesn’t make any sense. Adora squeezes her eyes and rubs at them with the back of her sleeve. But it’s her bandaged arm and - oh. The bite. Adora reaches out and traces the bindings with her hand. Old and weather torn, stained. She hadn’t changed the damn dressings in so long. She hadn’t really needed to, they were just for show anyway, there to hide the real ugliness - the real gruesome truth. But now, it doesn’t blend in. Not when her body is this clean and her clothes are this well kept. The soft fabric of the oversized flannel Sea Hawk had leant her so warm - _hot._ It doesn’t fit in. It doesn’t fit in at all and Adora - Adora can’t stand to look at it.

She doesn’t know when she started trembling. When her eyes stopped watering and turned into river run tear tracks down her face.

"Adora! Where’d that sorry sodful land lubber lass get off to!?" Sea Hawk out of the din in her head.

Adora bites her bottom lip and keens. High pitched and waning. _Get a grip. Get a grip before you slip get a grip. _She lifts the hand that had been cradling her bitten arm and bites down hard on the palm to keep the dying animal inside her quiet. Put it out of it’s misery. _Get a grip. Get a grip._

"Adora!"

She’s gotta get out of here.

__________

The amber sloshes around inside the bottle, thin and hollow as Adora takes another long swig of it before tossing it to the side. Breathing. Just keep breathing. Time has kind of slipped out from underneath her, it’s still dark but she doesn’t exactly know when she left the feast - the - what did they call it? The party. Yeah.

_She pulls at the cord, nice and snug._

Somehow she’d ended up back in front of her and Catra’s house. Their home. Sitting out on the curb of their godamn cul de sac. But her temples are still throbbing and her skin is still burning. She thought this was supposed to make her feel better. All it’s done is put a fog over her eyes.

Adora scowls through the haze. If anything, her emotions were a lot less confusing now. There weren’t any questions to answer. Any contradictions to explain…it was just her. And her anger. She was angry. And it felt -…it felt good to finally know that.

Embrace that.

…

And yet…

_Another sip. Another breath. _

Underneath even that…

_Fingers shaking just a little as they hover._

she just felt…

_White knuckled on Mara’s switch blade._

tired

_Unbidden, a set of shiny doe eyes. Pink cropped hair._

The switchblade clatters to the cement between her legs. And Adora breathes through her teeth. Seething a little. Vision spotting and blurring like a burned out polaroid, the kind she'd read about in that stupid encyclopedia...a funny little box that spat out memories as you made them. Back at the H.O.R.D.E they'd had cameras of course. But nothing as ancient or retrograde as instant film, nothing so trivial.

"Hey, where the hell have you - oof..." Catra reels back at the heady scent of alcohol and Adora breathes.

"Jeez Adora, what’d you do down the whole keg?" She kicks one of the bottles with her shoe and it goes rolling on the axis of the flute in a circle. Always centered on that unwavering origin. Adora growls defiantly.

"Gotta be honest with ya Firefly girl, didn’t think you were the type." She reaches down and eyes the empty bottle before smirking with all those sharp canine teeth. "Guess you really are perfect at everything."

"Fuck off."

"Everything except taking compliments I guess - Hey!" Catra reels back on her heels when Adora launches up on her legs and shoves her solidly on the shoulders. Wobbling a little when she stands straight up, those pesky polaroids clouding her sight.

"I said to fuck off!" She’d been frustrated before. Annoyed before. But this. Well, this was new.

But Catra's voice isn’t angry.

"Yeah, I got that much…"

It’s searching.

"Come on, let’s go sleep this off- " Adora throws her off.

"Get the fuck off me!"

"Adora. - " Frustration. Finally. And then " - are you bleeding? Hey." The thin red thread curving down her forearm pokes out from her sleeve. The source stemming right above where she’d tried to carve the damn thing out. Catra’s eyes cut down to find the switchblade laying innocently on the ground. Her jaw clicks shut and -

"Adora - " She throws her off again.

"I’m trying to help you, asshole!"

"Like we helped Scorpia?"

…

"Like how we left her to - to ah - uhm," Adora chuckles at the stumble and bumble of her words, thick and disjointed as they unravel out her control. "To die." She snaps her fingers when the words click together, leveling her pointer finger at Catra and jabbing it to emphasis each word. "To die in that fucking - "

"Adora. - "

"God forsaken - "

"Adora!"

"Shit hole." She all but spits the truth of it at Catra’s feet.

Catra just stares at her, the fur on her jacket collar outlined against the bright burn light from the mess hall. "You’re drunk."

"No shit." She ignores the slur in her voice for favor of the venom.

Catra just stares at her.

"Y’know," Adora drawls. "You never did tell me what happened with Entrapta." Her tone wobbles even as she tries to keep it conversational. "Y’know? Y’know your friend."

"Sit down."

"What, was it a deal gone south? Ration cards? Drugs? What?"

"Sit. Down."

"Did you sell her out? - "

"Adora, you - …" she turns her head to the side and bites her bottom lip to stop herself "you don’t know what you’re talking about."

"I know enough." She doesn’t recognize her voice with how it pitches. "Enough to know that you’ve murdered what? Dozens of men? And that’s not even counting since we left Boston. How many people I’ve - " her stomach lurches painfully. For the 2nd time that night she thinks she might have to be sick. 'I should never have stayed this long..."

"Adora - things. Happen. I’m sorry. But they just do." Catra raises a hand towards her but Adora jerks out of her guiding arm. "But trying to go anywhere this time of year is pretty fucking stupid. And just because you think the world revolves around your color coded _vision board_\- "

‘Why’d you even take this job?"

Catra visibly stiffens.

"Why are you even _here, _Catra? You know you could’ve found a way back into the city - H.O.R.D.E be fucking damned."

Adora throws her hands up and laughs sharply. And Catra...

"I mean, you don’t care about making it to Colorado. You hate the Fireflies, you’ve made that _very_ clear."

Catra’s shoulders seem to wither in defense.

"So why are you even here, if you don’t believe I’m the cure?"

"I know you’re immune. - "

"But you don’t think anything will come of it. Or at the very least you don’t think whatever vaccine or cure they can come up with will be worth it."

"I don’t think we’ll _survive_ two more fucking days out there in winter is what I think."

"Why are you here."

Catra’s hackles rise and her eyes darken. "Well what about you? Huh? Why are you here?" They glint in the dark like knives. "Cause I hate to break it to you Adora, but your buddy Light Hope wasn’t lookin too good last time I saw her."

Adora’s shoulders pull back. "What?"

Catra levels her chin at her, jaw hard. "Most if not all the Fireflies were wiped out that day in Boston, Adora. You were there, you saw. Do you really honestly believe anyone from your fan club is still alive to meet us if we get to wherever the fuck you think we’re going?" Adora glowers and tries her godamn best to just - **breathe**. "All this Firefly bullshit. Vaccines. Cures. Honestly! You should just be grateful that you’re still drawing breath!"

"That bullshit is the reason I’m still alive."

"And it was a fluke! You got _lucky_! That doesn’t mean you owe anybody shit just because of your fucked up genes! I mean - let’s - let’s say the Fireflies are still alive. Alright? How are you going to find them?"

"Sea Hawk and Mermista were stationed out here. They might know where to go," Adora hates how small and petulant she sounds. How close she might actually be to tears.

"Jesus Christ Adora you - It's over. Alright!? I mean - " Catra blinks away and when she looks back her eyes are shining. "Why can’t you just stay!?"

Adora balks and her voice pitches terribly when she all but cries at Catra, heedless of anyone who might hear them. "How can you say that after what happened to Scorpia?" Her heart is tearing.

"Just look at what happened!" Catra shouts. "To Scorpia. To Glimmer. To Bow! They’re dead, Adora! They - " Her voice shakes with the fury of it. "We - we don’t have to end up like that." Catra stares at her insistently but Adora's head drifts downwards, to the side, trying to focus on some solid fixed point that can just - just re stablize the sway of the world and ground she's standing on. Catra turns and paces in a tight circle. Seething and growling at her feet before she turns back abruptly and raises her head so she’s looking down her nose at Adora.

"Y’know back home. Back before any of this shit…" her eyes are shining in the glow. "We were good. We were better than good, and then you told me to fuck off and I - " She breaks off and her mouth hangs agape slightly, but she doesn’t turn away, she doesn’t look away. "I fought for everything I had. To stay alive. To fucking wake up the next morning. And I waited years for you. For this godamn - _identity_ crisis to be over with already!"

Adora squeezes her eyes shut but she can't quiet the storm that is Catra's anger.

"I thought that you just needed to get it out of your system. That you'd come to your godamn senses sooner or later - because I knew." A beat. "I _knew _you wouldn't do that.' It feels like the switchblade is tearing into her arm. "To me." Carving it out. "To us." Finally out.

"Imagine how it felt to hear that you weren’t even in Boston anymore."

Her voice trembles but holds steady. "That you’d left."

…

Despite the soul crushing break in her voice Catra holds her head high. Shoulders pulled back. Standing in the light. Almost like a setting sun. She hasn’t changed at all. She draws a breath, low and ragged and wheezing and - "This can be our second chance." Adora can’t breathe. Not when those moons are shining down on her like that.

But the world just swims and she shakes her head back and forth against the spotting of her vision. She can’t bear to hear any more of this.

"Adora - "

"Stop," Wet and angry as she pivots on her heel. Nothing cooperates. Nothing connects together. And the world is spinning and swimming in dark. "Don’t you - don’t you see?" Adora’s not above begging, not if Catra would finally - _finally _understand. "This is what everything stands on! This is what Mara and everyone needed me for. What Bow and Glimmer needed...what _you..._This - it’s my last chance." Her voice cracks and she thinks about the township. She thinks about the gardens and the movie nights. Swifty tucked away in the stable. And godamn Thanksgiving._Two quarantine orphans_. Sea Hawk. _Cast against a burning sky._ Catra. _A firefly pendant flashing in the breeze_. And she - she can’t - she - "I can’t. Fuck I- " She wavers, stiff and static amidst the chaos. "I just needed to get out of that fucking furnace."

Adora clenches the bite. The trench just above it. Blood oozing out her fingertips as she grips the soft inside. It was a mistake. A stupid stupid mistake.

Just something for herself. Just something for herself for once...

"Alright just - listen to me, alright? Can we please. _Please _sit down." Adora looks up at her. Blue and gold. Gold and Blue. Two full moons. "Please."

Two doe eyes.

Adora doesn’t sit down. Instead she paws uselessly at her sleeve and squeezes hard to comfort herself - her last reminder.

"Adora, stop! - "

"Did you see the way she looked at me?" She doesn’t recognize her voice. It sounds far away and static ridden. But Adora remembers. Adora saw. She saw it all. The collapse of dead weight. Brains blasted all out across the floor. Adora saw the pain. The suffering.

The accusation.

Unbidden,Catra seems to materialize in front of her, a vision emerging out of time and darkness. Hands grasping her wrists and eyes lined up against her own. Her fingers lacing with red as she grabs at Adora’s own hands. And for a moment…for a moment Adora thinks she can see her - the _weight _that’s defined all that she is since the day she'd inherited Mara’s switchblade. Then she’s placing a bloodied hand in her hair and pulling her closer so that they’re pressed together in the soft glow of lights and the dark. Adora’s nose just nudging the side of Catra’s ear. And she still smells like cinnamon and spice.

"We’re safe here…" she whispers. Adora grits her teeth to keep the hot tears from spilling. No. "Everything’s ok." No.

All Adora can manage to do is stand there and take it, wobbling a little as she leans against Catra’s searing hot body.

__________

The next day, Adora finds Sea Hawk cleaning up the mess from last night. She lets him know she plans to be on her way by the end of the week. He'd grown stiff with shock but Adora resolved herself and asked him to look after Catra before she turns to go find Mermista.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh sweet summer child...Adora's takin some heavy hits this chapter (and every other chapter after this, haha...). 
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively; feedback both positive and critical helps more than you know!


	6. Winter I (Adora)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never trust a man in a big white van

**"_They’re about to have another godamn meeting about the safety of this lab…"_**

** **

Adora double clicks on the button to speed up the reel recording, biting her lip with barely reserved patience.

**"All of are data is here- "**

_Come on…give me something to work with._

_Click_.

**"I’m about to run another test…otherwise this incompetence- "**

_Click._

Adora sets the recorder back down ginelrgly so as not to disturb the thin layer of dust on the desk, as if she were never there at all. She glances up. The recorders were scattered sparingly across campus by different and assorted scientists, lab assistants, security personel…Fireflies.

No where to be seen now of course.

Adora shoulders open another lab door and surveys the tables and Bunsen burners, huds and chemical beakers…bathing in pale winter light streaming in from the windows. Once pristine lab conditions now corroded over with dust. Undisturbed. Untouched.

…Hm. Adora makes her way through stepping lightly so as not to disturb the ghosts living here in the silence.

** _"-On top of that, perimeter routine has mandated a secondary meeting to address recent patrol casualties. We lost two more guards to infected attacks last week…"_ **

** **

The voice of another recorder fritzes in and out of static and Adora’s brow furrows as she sifts through the grainy words of another research recorder.

** **

** _"Private Frosta - remai…"_ **

** **

** _"Shi- "_ **

** **

** _"- - bit. - "_ **

** **

** _"…"_ **

** **

** _…_ **

** **

She cuts the feed.

Adora makes her way to the door and eyes up and down the length of the empty hallway. Dark and musky. And -…abandoned. Completely and utterly deserted. Her footsteps hollowly echoed as she worked her way through room by room, fingers laced around the handgun at her hip and resting on the trigger. But…nothing. Not even a body.

…

This…this was a good thing. It means they’d left. It means they were still alive….

It means she’d missed them. Again.

Adora sighed and placed her hands down on the window sill overlooking the - what had Sea Hawk called it…the quad. Weird. A wide sprawling courtyard that valleyed a large concrete fountain husk. Dried up and hollowed out in the cold. Completely out in the open, indefensible from all sides...a poor strategic move. But Sea Hawk _had _said the base wouldn’t be a fortress - it was just meant to be an outpost. A checkpoint for the Firefly caravans that chain linked between occupied quarantine zones like ant lines and supply chains across country. But Adora had at least expected something. A clue to point her in _any _kind of direction, a scent to pick up on. Where to go next. What to look for. Something to - she doesn’t know what. Just -. Something.

The air puffs out around her nose as she exhales slowly.

_Something…_

This was stupid. She couldn’t comb the entire campus like this forever, it was already picked bone dry of anything useful, just a skeleton husk of empty promises and blatant dead ends. Catra had warned her -

Adora shuts her eyes and rests her forehead against the frost crusted window pane.

The image of that screwed and disdainful sneer tilted up and down over the cut of a sharp chin. Pointed canines peeling back like knives. Completely smug and-

…her eyes blink open. Now wasn’t the time.

She pushes off from the window and turns her head towards the West Wing, darkened and hollow.

__________

Adora finds them splayed out in an office chair. Quietly floating in the silence behind a barricaded lab office, the shell of a skeleton suspended in winter light. It’s…peaceful. As peaceful as informal tombs can be she supposes. And Adora hesitates at the threshold, one hand leaning against the frame as she breathes in the stale sacred air.

They’re dressed in standard issue Firefly fatigues and a fraying tank, the jacket hanging loosely open around shriveled shoulders. Adora approaches stepping lightly and delicately to find the skin dried and stretched over the frame like a canvas. If she peers closely enough, she could maybe just make out the remains of a face. Female. Middle aged. Maybe younger. Their eyes dried shut and their cracking lips sighing open in reverence…

"…"

…Adora sights the silver glint nestled in the stitching fabric of the Firefly’s breastbone. She reaches down to unhook one of the pendant tags hanging around their neck and raises it just so into the light. The name is stamped boldly on the backside of the Firefly insignia like a tombstone:

**Captain Netossa**

Adora stares at it a moment, running her thumb over the surface before she pockets the tag and eyes the decaying corpse. Her eyes trace the captain’s serene expression. Eyes and muscles relaxed in a final permanent sigh. Hairline just beginning to peel back and start balding.

Adora’s eyes flicker back down to the Fireflies withered hands. "Captain," Adora settles under the weight and braces herself against the pressure, so heavy and quiet in the dusted light. A weary resigned sigh. "…Thank you for your service."

A pin could drop.

…

In the lieu of silence Adora spots something else. Clenched in the bony hands of the Captain’s lap, a plastic cartridge recorder, still in tact and resting undisturbed in the captain’s rigid grasp. She reaches down and only slightly hesitates before unravelling the decaying fingers from the plastic box.

_krk. _

Stiff and brittle bones.

_Krk._

Disintegrated and fractured.

Adora grimaces at the crick and crack of another knuckle as she disentangles the recorder from wiry fingers. She brings it up close to her ear.

** _"I’m dying…guess I got some time to reflect…heh. S’more than I woulda asked for. - "_ **

** **

Adora stares down at the skeleton as the captain’s voice is torn wet and bloody by racking coughs. Her eyes are drawn to the blood splotches blended and dried into the fabric turned russet brown long ago. Adora bites her lip and speeds up the reel.

**"Been years it felt like we were- "**

**"Whole thing was a damn waste of time.- "**

**"Looking for the others. They’ve all returned to Saint Mary’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. You’ll find them there. Still trying to save the world. Good luck with that…."**

An empty sigh that dissipates into the atmosphere like it was never there at all.

**"…Oh, Spinny….what was I supposed to do?…what did you expect me to do?…"**

The feed Fritzes out and Adora is left alone again in the silence.

Salt Lake…Salt Lake! She’d heard of Salt Lake. Seen it on the maps that she’d pilfered from Sea Hawk. All the way out in Utah.

_That’s not exactly close. _

Catra’s voice snarks ever constant in her back room brain.

_No farther than I’ve already come._

_Heh. Scorpia used to talk like that._

_…_

_What makes you think the rest of ‘em made it to Salt Lake?_

_"They made it."_

_You don’t know that._

_"I have to believe they did."_

She can just hear Catra’s grating scoff.

_Jesus Adora. You know we’re starting to sound like one of those fucking recorders. You talk shit. I bust my ass over and under trying to humor you, and when we still come up empty handed you go grasping at fucking straws and round and round we fucking go._

_"…"_

A stilted scornful chuckle. _Face it Firefly girl, this is what you left me for. Another wild goose chase and some rotting skeletons._

_"You were safer at the Township." _Safer the further Adora trekked. With each step, safer.

Catra’s voice pauses and Adora stares misty eyed out the window down into the courtyard below, straining against the tension welling over in her eyes. The weight on her chest.

_Do you remember your promise?_

Adora shoves it down. Down. Down. Down. Down deep into the past where it fucking belongs. Down into the depths of her memories that couldn’t hurt her anymore than she’d let them. Get a grip for fuck’s sake. All that mattered now was getting out of here and making -…making things right…for once.

_Two quarantine orphans._

She raised her her jacket sleeve to her eyes and brushed at them violently.

_Burning skies._

Just get it the fuck together…

_A beaming ray flashing in the fading light._

_…_wait. -

** _BAM!_ **

Adora throws herself sideways and barrels into a filing cabinet as the fractured glass sprays across the ground, handgun cocked and cradled close to her chest as it heaves in tandem with the pump pump pump of adrenaline.

"For _fuck _sake-!"

** _BAM!_ **

A second shot goes wide and splits open another pane as Adora brings up the flap of her jacket up to shield her face. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck. Fuck! She leans up on the balls of her feet and crunches over the brittle shards back out into the hallway taking stock of the surroundings.

Hollow squeaking footsteps resounding down the left wing, voices. Adora shoulders her pack and bolts down the opposite length, feet flying beneath her as she peels through the corridors - panting and careening as she throws herself full speed ahead.

She reaches the staircase and rounds the threshold, her sneakers squealing in protest as she slides out and around the shoulder, feet ambling down quickly when -

** _BAM!_ **

She falls on her backside, hand still clutching white knuckled on the railing as her legs pedal and kick backwards. The hunter’s hulking shadow stood stoic and rigid at the bottom stair. **_BAM! BAM!_**

_"_Over here!"

_Shit!_

Adora’s already dashing back over the lip of the staircase and past the abandoned lab rooms when she hears them rounding back towards her. She can’t tell how many. 7? 12? 20? She can’t tell. All she knows is that she’s being herded in by the pack towards the courtyard. Like a lamb to the slaughter. Fuck. This wouldn’t work.

She checks the clip.

And she can’t take them on full force.

She keeps running.

"The passover! She’s headed for the passover!"

"Do_ NOT_ let her go!"

The air seethes and hisses through her teeth as she pumps her arms. Her eyes cut over her shoulder and she just catches the shift of the shadows as they warp and rage on her heels.

"There she is!"

Fuck her. Honestly just honestly fuck her - **_BAM!_**

_NGH!_

Adora clutches at her upper bicep where the bullet clipped her. Cheek pressed down into the chilled refracting tiles beneath her. Her teeth grit and she grinds out a painful yell that rises deep down in throat.

"Fffffaughck!" Spittle froths and spills out her mouth onto the floor as she tries to cull the pain reverberating inside her skull.

"Pinned her! Get your fucking assess over here!"

Shit. Adora fists the ground and reels up onto her hands and knees. Throwing herself behind a barricaded table upturned and splayed out across the linoleum, shoving her hand around the edge to send a spray of wide shots at the thunderous stampede of footsteps. She vaguely hears the hunter slump behind a wall and she’s already pulling free a roll of bandages and stretching it over the weeping tear of her sleeve.

"All right bitch. You’ve had your fun." He sounds like cigar burns and engine fires. "But I think it’s about time you threw in the towel."

The squeaking of boots rounding up the stairs.

Adora spits and pulls tight on her bicep. _"Gah!"_

_Breathe_…"You first_ fUcker_!" She blindly pops another round into some vague direction over the edge of the table.

** _BAM! _ **

Another bullet ricochets off the clip of the table and pings sharply down the hall. Adora flinches and raises the gun over the table and sends a volley of metal overhead - _BAM! BAM!_

"Fuck! Fuckin - _Bitch!"_ Adora hears the hunter slump back behind cover and she seizes the opportunity to launch back upright and peel off towards the double doored overpass. Turning just so she can send another bullet whizzing behind her to keep them pinned.

She rams into the doors and braces her good shoulder into the hard surface, heels digging in so she can force through the barricade.

"Get her!"

Adora turns prepared to fire another cover round just as - _OOF!_

The weight forces her forward and down as the pair of them go careening through the doors. A mass of weight leaning down on her chest and pushing the air out out out of her lungs. Crushing an imprint of her body into the cement. Grating and girtty and bruising all up the side of her face.

She can feel their breath at her ear and their hands at her elbows wrenching back back bac- **_BAM!_**

Hot, wet, and viscous. Adora’s gun smokes and she scrambles up and out from underneath - not even turning to check - to look - Don’t. She’s got to -

Another mass slams into her backside, shoving her against the chilled metal rod railing of the overpass out in the open winter air. The white washed sky gleaning down vacantly from above. Empty. And vast.

"Fucking bitch," smoggy and heated breaths that puff out onto the vulnerable flesh of her jugular vein and the hand that wraps around her windpipe. Adora can only lean so forward as to keep her neck from snapping, eyes always trained on that blanketing sky.

"You’re more trouble than you’re worth." She can feel the pressure biting down, gasping and frothing slightly as she kicks out with her knee into the inside of their thigh aiming for the juncture between their legs.

The man grunts but realigns and jostles them back and forth so that he can slam her down and into her. The rail butting into her spine so that she can’t - can’t breathe and can’t - can’t -_ "GAH!"_

Adora’s fingers run red as she jams her knife into her attacker’s shoulder flesh. Deep deep and wrenches it free so she can bring it slashing across the soft patch of skin at his pulsing neck only to be blocked at the last moment by a thick forearm that runs down the length of her right arm to grab her wrist and twist-

"_Hsss!"_

_"_I can’t wait to gut you." Growling down into her face, half slumped over into her and sweaty. Dead limbed and seething through clenched teeth Adora’s arm creaks as she attempts to twist it free, grip clenched white knuckled. But her head’s rammed back over the rail, wrist bruising as her fingers disengage from shoulder down and loose tether on the blade that goes clattering to her frantic scrabbling feet. She lets out a choked startled cry that gets muffled by the arm bracing her throat. Whines around it in protest like an animal pinned down in the hunt - pressing it out of her lungs.

And all there is are white skies. Polaroid slides…

"FUCK!"

Just as the encroaching fuzz begins to take hold of her vision and limbs Adora finds herself sliding down onto the floor, cut loose like the strings of a puppet, eyes and vision slanting across the angling floor. Her legs kick out and she arches, hands scratching at her throat as she claws the air deeper into her lungs.

"RAGH!"

…Catra?

Adora cranes her neck and scrapes her cheek against the asphalt to see to get any sort of view of - Catra. Catra wearing a thick denim jacket and eyes bleeding red fury, fangs bared to in a gut deep growl and - Catra?

"Get off me you -fucking bitch!"

Catra’s elbow locks tight around the lumbering man’s neck wrenching it back as if to break before she can choke him out. Leering down and huffing from the exertion as a bead of sweat dribbles down her temple.

Adora’s vision tilts on an axis and swerves blearily, catching a glimpse of glittering silver. The knife.

With herculean effort Adora scrabbles forward and pulls her uncoordinated arm from under herself so she can flop a deadened hand atop the handle blade.

"RghHH! Fucking-NGH!" Catra hisses violently as she struggles to get a better lock on him. His elbow jabs into her nose bridge and a spritz of blood arcs into the air just as the piece of shit rounds on her and grabs her firmly by her unruly mane of hair. Catra -!

"Ca-! Catra-!" Her voice wheezes but Adora has enough adrenaline still thrumming through her that she hefts the small blade in Catra’s direction where it skids within arms reach as she violently claws and scratches at his face with her nails.

"Mother. FUcker!" A resounding punch to the jaw and the hunter straddling her waist goes reeling back and slumps over to groan before spitting out a rotten bloodied tooth. Adora watches Catra twist and arch for the knife -! He grabs at her face from behind -! Biting down on crooked knobby knuckles-!

"rgh!"

Adora’s wobbled up to a half standing position where she can see it all. Braced against the rail and panting as she watches it all unfold. Catra juts her elbow back firmly into the soft padding of his chest - Adora hears the _whoosh _of it glide out in one forceful gale. The knife -

Shooting up as Catra braces one hand on the hilt, the other on the back end to effectively force and slip the blade into the soft underside collar boned slope like putty.

He flops to the side in a withering heap. A carcass gone empty from the tear in it’s seam. Life blood flowing, spewing, gurgling out and down into a puddle. A river. A lake….ocean. And in the middle of it, Catra. Stumbling and bumbling onto a rough rock in the sea brine, hunched over and huffing for oxygen. Eyes still a little hazy, teeth stained red. And Adora’s never seen a siren but she never believed herself capable of jumping ship for one until today. She yearns to reach out and touch to make sure she hadn’t been well and truly strangled to death.

Catra spits and rucks up the hunter’s shirt so she can grab the radio clipped at his belt and smash the blabbering thing under the heel of her foot before upturning his pockets as several or so bullets clink clink clink in the glassy red reflection. The static energy laces her movements as her fingers scrabble and scatter in the russet red liquid before they rapidly dance over the blade handle that’s still poking out of the man’s soft underjaw. Catra unsheathes Mara’s blade from flesh with a fluid abrupt tug before her wild eyes glance up - up at Adora. And stilling.

Barely a breath between them as their eyes connect. Silver blue and twin corn moons that haven’t aged with them despite the years. Adora hadn’t even noticed the tear tracks until they were burning down her face. Her lip already trembling even as she bites down on cracked and flaking lips. The breeze unbothered and indifferent whispers and whistles a low and calming tune around them in the echo of newly born silence.

Catra is the first to breathe in. To straighten. To step forward gradually and tenderly in the ripples as if - as if to embrace after all these godamn fucking years. Her mouth opens and Adora’s name slips out just as gentle as the flakes begin to dance down around them. Catra’s face becomes framed by sweaty stray hairs that’ve escaped her bandana and it’s ridiculous how gentle and tender she’s become after what just happened. Ridiculous that Adora doesn’t even care. Because she’s alive. She’s- "Adora- "

"RAAGH!"

Adora felt the impact as it blindsided her. Soul deep and down into her bones somehow. She felt the force of it like an oceanic wave. The hunter that materialized in the peripheral and pounded her - Catra. Across the length of the overpass. Into glass that shattered like white caps and down into inky black that drowned like deep open void. The impact of water. Concrete. Steele. Onto flesh.

All this she felt, clutching onto the lip as if she could will gravity to cease and oceans to dry if she could just will enough force into the universe. Black holes that rip from her own tears.

But none of that happened. The fabric held firm by the fiber. Time still ticked for every tock. And Catra. Catra still smelled like cinnamon and spice even when Adora skidded down on her knees at Catra’s side on the ground floor. Curled in on the _barb_and seething through her teeth. Even as she was coated in iron red wrought and piss and the world seemed to rupture in and out around them when Adora yanked with all her strength to the sound of a sickening squelching_\- KRK_! And even as they hobbled down together across reflective tiled hallways and the crumbing remains of lives once lived, Catra’s arm wrapped around her neck, wrist limp at the shoulder she grasped. And even as Adora’s wild eyes flickered and shuttered between Catra’s paleing complexion and over her shoulder. The hole weeping at her side as she pressed the coat into the flesh. Pulling both their dead weights across fields of endless expanse. Even then. Adora could identify the telltale scent that was all just - "Catra,"

_wheeze_

"Catra. Catra, stay awake. You need to help me get you out of here." Adora lifts her chin to sweep their flank with her eyes as Catra’s chin sank lower and lower on her chest. Adora gave her a rough prompting shake. ’Catranova? How we doin?’

_Wheeze. "Ha…" Wheeze… "Havn’ hea tha…n’while…"_

Adora’s teeth grit and she shoulders Catra practically onto her back with the next step. She huffs with the effort. "I swear to God…you come out of this alive…I’ll call you whatever you want."

It might be a laugh. But with the way it rattles and seethes Adora’s not so sure. Especially when the blood splatters across her chest in speckling blossoms of her hoodie front.

She shoulders all the weight she can bear.

"What are- " an unbidden sob. ‘What are you even doing here?’

_Wheeze…_Catra’s lips buzz against her neckline when she speaks. Mumbles. Whimpers. "Glutton for punishment…"_ Wheeze…_

_…"_Heh…"

_Wheeze…Wheeze…Wheeze…._

Fluid in the lungs.

_Wheeze…Wheeze…_

A puncture in the air balloon.

_Wheeze…_

"I’m gonna get you out of this." Shouts echoing down like stones rippling out on the water. Adora furrows her brow and screws her eyes shut, her lips a thin wavering line. She cocks the gun. Looks down at Catra who’s got her eyes clenched and her face pressed into the fabric by her collar bone.

"I promise."

__________

_Inhale._

Line it up…

_Exhale._

_…Sorry._

_shk!_

Adora’s arrow finds its home in the rabbit’s unguarded flank, red sprouting across the soft downy fur and onto the ground. A clean mark, right in the soft vulnerable cavity just below the ribcage, far away from any of the tough resistive muscle, a spot where the blood could flow free and fast. A quick death to minimize the suffering - the perfect shot.

Adora steps forward, snow crunching and giving way underneath her feet before she crouched down and snap the neck just for good measure.

_Krk!_

Adora sighs. "This isn’t gonna last very long…"

Adora pushes the arrow all the way through to avoid ripping out the internal organs. The rabbit’s mouth hangs agape slightly, drooping on the loose hinge of it’s jaw. Adora’s frown deepens. Her breath puffs out in tiny clouds around her mouth before she seals it shut.

Behind her, Swifty whinnies and Adora sheaths the arrow belted at her hip. "You doin alright buddy?" She strides over and knots the leather on Swifty’s saddle around the rabbit’s dangling chin. The white stallion stomps a hoof and flicks his tail indignantly, his rump shudders.

"I know you miss your oats; I miss my bed." She loops it and runs the length up and around - holds up an arch to run it through. _And the rabbit runs around and into the burrow…_

Adora’s eyes linger over the carcass. "…But we make do right?"

…

Swifty makes a chuffing sound out his nose and Adora pats his neck, careful to wipe the blood off her pant leg before running her fingers through his mane. His head turns, the white fur around his cheek and jaw butting up against her hand, his shiny brown eye lining up with hers. Adora’s mouth pulls back in a tired whimsy smirk. ‘I miss having her around too.’ Swifty blinks.

"Come on. It’s freezing." Adora rounds Swifty’s backside and trails her hand around his rump when -

"Shit…"

Adora sucked in a breath and went rigid in the snow, her hand still clutched around Swifty’s reigns. Twenty paces away or so stood a sturdy broad chested stag, antlered and puffing clouds from its narrowed snout ankle deep in the snow. The beast’s branch limbed legs trailed delicately in the snow. It was massive to say the last. Easily as large as Swifty, and densely padded with thick winter layers.

Behind her, Swifty gave an indignant snort. In a panic, Adora braced his mane and twisted her neck frantically before wrenching back to see - glistening black eyes sparkling back at her against the white canvas snow. Piercing and boring deep into Adora’s vision with indifferent ease. Adora froze - both their bodies locked still in the cold.

Adora brought up a steady hand, her knees groaning and grating with the tender shift in weight she displaces across her heels. A single half step crunching down snow. It's ears flick! And she draws in silently, sharp and muted under her breath as she stills and feels the tension slip around her and through the atmosphere between them. She doesn't know whether she planned to ease it into a caress or reach for her bow when it’s fenneled ears snap back against its head and it launches in a powerful bound across leagues of sloping snow - one mighty leap that sends it flying down the droves, powdery white sparking after the trailing arc of its hooves.

And it was gone.

Adora stood there alone in silence. Stock still and entranced by the phantom that had possessed her. She didn’t realize that her jaw was still hung loose at the hinge until Swifty gave another huff and pawed at the ground. She blinked. Blinked again. Craned her neck after the vision still leaping on the path of a trailing thread.

Gone.

Adora stands there for a moment, stock still in the freeze before locking her jaw and frantically lashed Swifty’s reigns to a under hanging branch. ‘You’ll just startle it.’ She explains before rucking up the quiver from Swifty’s saddle and gating over open fields of snow deep deep into the woods.

__________

The stag took her at least 5 miles out of the way of her intended route. Ultimately costing her more than half the day spent chasing and tailing the swift forest dancer even as it evaded her arrows time and time again. That is until it didn’t. And several arrows burrowed into the flank of its neck slowed and drained until it stumbled to the ground and just…didn’t rise. Adora’s knees crunched in the snow as she rose up to get some leverage and shove the knife - _shk! _Slicing into the soft gutted underbelly. The heat of the intestines rolling out into the snow and steaming up with the stench made Adora’s eyes water at the brim. She breathed through her mouth as she tied off the gut before she dug her heels in and rolled the stag over to drain it dry. Huffing and groaning as she shouldered the weight up and over.

"Ugh…" the carcass let out a resounding squelch and thump as it quieted and bled out on the snow and Adora’s eyes trailed over the image.

It was really a huge beast. Up close and personal Adora could actually appreciate the sheer magnitude of its mass. It had to be at _least _5ft tall, and the length of it definitely would’ve surpassed her own outstretched arms. At full height it’s great branching antlers would’ve shadowed her easily. And now the fuzz on its snout was stained red and its mouth dangled agape pressed into the snow, the regality of its stature whispering away into void like a ghost and its ethereal eyes leaving only a graceless hulking mass of bloodied meat.

There’s no way she’d be able to haul it all the way back. Not with the way winter had eaten away at her body weight and muscle over the past days. Honestly, she’d burned off more energy hunting the damn thing than she’d ever get to eat of it. But if she was fast she could still salvage something to cure and store away for later. And maybe if she packed the snow in it would keep until tomorrow and she could come back to skin-

_krk!_

_"_Who’s there?" The bow string pulled back at a dog legged angle as Adora flexed back her shoulders and rested her hand against her cheek. Breathing down and pressing into the bone underneath her eye to keep it from trembling. "Come out!" She barked.

For a split second she considers that her trigger happy anxiety has burned through her last reserves of sanity. The air is still. Nothing breathes. And for all the world was worth Adora was the only one left in it. Until-

"Hello,"

Adora’s knuckles go white on the grip as a fairly tall woman, dressed in downy winter fabrics - hood drawn up and boots caked and crusted with icy snow. What Adora can’t make out between the shadow of her cresting hood and the gas mask that covers the lower section of her face she sees in the woman’s eyes - glowing emerald green and sharp. Elderly crows feet stamped at the edges do little to curb the cut in her appraising glare.

Adora eyes the hunting rifle strapped to her shoulder.

She’s much older than her juvenile companion that follows her out a half minute after snake eyes. Which Adora surmises, must be a good sign. Even if the younger girl’s hard jaw and sneering eyes thunder like a storm cloud.

A beat of unannounced intentions while each party surveys the other. The odds. The luck. The likelihood of survival…Adora doesn’t like the numbers.

"Despite what you may conclude we haven’t been following you," It’s a crisp no nonsense sort of voice. It reminds her of Light Hope. "We’d just like to talk."

_That’s a first._

"Any sudden moves and I put one right between your eyes." She fumbles to think of what Catra would do in this situation. "Dido for buddy boy." She winces. Catra would’ve sounded more threatening than that.

Adora wants to say she doesn’t buy this bull crap for a second, doesn’t even consider their true intentions and high tails it out of there with as much deer as she can haul and out two arrows. But she has to admit they don’t look the part. Rough around the edges and a little callous in the eyes but…then she thinks about Sea Hawk and Mermista. Hardened and jagged like a reef rock in the sea but holding fast ever still.

…

"What do you want."

The woman doesn’t answer immediately. It puts her on edge and makes her want to squirm in her boots where she stands. She holds firm regardless. Even as snake eyes rake over her body and log further stock. Adora steels herself and is about to abandon ship and demand that they kindly fuck off when-

"We’re from a larger group. Women. Children. All very, very hungry." She can’t see her mouth move under the mask, Can’t see the quirking lips to accompany the relaxed easy going atmosphere clouding in the woman’s eyes.

"So am I - women and children." She offers defensively, eyeing the younger trigger happy girl that’s shuffled a foot out of the way as if to flank her. "…All very hungry too."

"Maybe we could strike a deal then. A bargain to benefit the both of us. What is it you need?" The woman’s stature doesn’t waver from her strict posture but the edges of her shoulders seem to go lax and her voice - it’s calm and collected and civil. Orderly. "Weapons, ammo, clothes- "

"Medicine,"

It’s out of her mouth before she can think to stop it. Before she can even consider to juggle and weigh the weight of what she’s actually considering. But then again, she doesn’t have to does she? She takes a breath.

"Do you have any antibiotics?"

Snake eyes slither and slip over her and something slippery crawls down down down Adora’s spine. "We do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace for impact kids... :(
> 
> I meant to post this a lot sooner than I did but got distracted. Heh. 
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	7. Winter II (Adora)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I...LOVE??? Double Trouble?????? UUmMmm???

_Chk_

Come on…

_Chk_

Come. On.

_Chk_

_Chk!_

_._

_._

_._

_Fssk!_

The tiny flame finally flutters to life on on the switch, the smallest wavering petal glowing in the frigid dark. ‘Ok…’ Adora breathes shaky and shuddering clouds of air into the cold, the heat puffing onto her frigid fingers. ‘Ok…here we go…’ she dances the flame under a fistful of dried up newspaper and watches as the edges flare up and burn ember red eating rabidly at the black and white trendils. The sheafs crinkle and curl, rustle when Adora raises it up just close enough so she can hurry and hasten the burn line. Shuffling over a half pace on her haunches Adora hastily stuffs the starter into the basement heater underneath a lonely stone dead log shaft. It’s not much. Just a chuck of birch and some kindle twigs resting on top crumbling charcoal skeletons. Not enough to even last a full night. But Adora doesn’t want to run the risk of the smoke. Too much attention. And she…can’t afford that right now.

So with the little time she has she goes through the motions with practiced anxious hands. For a solid half hour Adora sits there stooped over on her heels and crouching over the hearth, delicately coaxing out the fire as easy as she dares before hauling the bucket of snow she’d collected over onto the hot iron when the embers begin to pop and crackle in earnest. The edges soften and weep into a soggy mushy mesh in the bucket. And Adora watches as the soppy wet snow begins to boil and bubble into clean water. Satisfied with the progress she turns aside and sidles over to her pack to rummage about the abyss before grasping her fist about a label less tin cylinder. When she’s smashing it open with a brick she silently prays to any God that might be listening that it wouldn’t be beans…

…

…again.

_Krchk!_

_…_

…godammit.

Adora sighs at the brown mucky paste leering up at her from the tin, preservative liquid and grayish coloring sending her stomach a bit rancid and rolling. The downturned lines of her face droop as she props the tin next to the purifying water, bubbling and popping with vigor now. At least it would be hot. Adora squats down then and fumbles with the match box so she can strike a waxy stick ablaze and ease open the storm lanterns’s glass shutter. The wick catches easy and the basement blooms a warm illuminating orange and casts sharp shadows on Adora’s face as she stares sullenly at the flutter and waver of the spark, kicked back on her heels as she waits for the rancid bean muck to heat up to a semi edible consistency.

A moment of silence if not peace settled into her bones as she sat back on her heels. Lonesome and cold as the fire crackled and popped in the furnace. Adora keeps her eyes fixed ahead on some point in space that she can’t or doesn’t care to pinpoint. Sighing long and wiry with the weight of the atmosphere and thickness of gravity.

Her eyes eventually glaze over the lantern flame. It looks a lot warmer than it is. And Adora frowns before she juts her chin forward and pulls her arms up to rest up on her knees, sleeves pulled back at her elbows. She draws her cold and clammy hands to her face so she she can huff a healthy cloud of heat into the threaded cage of her dead numb fingers. A hollow tin sound that sputters and withers to the floor just as it’s born. But just then…she catches sight of it.

Her reflection.

It’s leaning up against the cement wall behind a dusty old tarp, and the surface is coated in layers of grungy mold. The image bleary and swimming. But Adora can see. She traces the phantom’s outline with her eyes, unsettled and timid as she takes in the greasy mussed up hair that’s fraying free around her face. Dirt crusted into the crevices of her skin. Deep dark circles. A withering frame that grows spindly in the shallow valleys of her face. She doesn’t recognize herself. It’s not surprising. The past few weeks hadn’t exactly been kind. So she doesn’t really know why the sight of it is just so…unsettling. It makes her think of Boston oddly enough. To the last time she’d truly looked at her own image. Staring back at her from the H.O.R.D.E shower room when she had no idea of immunities or responsibilites or any of this shit. When all she had to worry about was making sure Catra made it to military drills in the dark of early morning training. When all she had to care about was Catra.

The firefly pendant rests at her chest just above her heart. It’s the only thing that hasn’t changed.

All her frown does is carve deeper into her face. She looks…hollow.

The stovetop bubbles and hisses indignantly for attention and Adora tears her gaze away with one last scornful grimace.

"Gah - shit! Hgh…_fuck_ me." Adora muffles her hiss into her chest as the tin singes her fingertips and she hastily shoves the offended limb under her armpit close so to cradle and squeeze out the hurt._ "Fffuck._ Jesus." She hikes up her sleeve with her other hand and carefully grasps the tin through the fabric, turning on the axis of her heel to stride quick and hasten across the room as she shovels a modest helping into her mouth. Swallowing before she can taste and grasping the lantern by the wiry wire handle while walking towards the mattress set up in the corner in the back. The warmest section of the basement, set up far away from the narrow frost crusted basement window.

Adora slows her haste and sets the lantern down easy and gentle on the upturned apple crate nearby before slowly kneeling down as her bones creak and pop on descent. Reaching out with tender hands she only slightly hesitates before placing a gentle hand on the shapeless lump underneath the rag blankets nestled on the mattress.

"Hey," she whispers. "Rise and shine." Barely hearing herself past the cotton balls and heartbeat buried in her ears.

…

"mm…"

Her throat clogs and Adora worries her lip as her brows knit subconsciously.

"Mm…?" A pale yellow eye glints up at her. Foggy and still a little fever laden but…present. Which is more than she could’ve hoped for less than half a week ago. She exhales a heavy sigh.

"Morning," she says even though it’d gone dark outside long ago. The dusk cloaking the trees and snow in night dim and blue darkness. Catra’s sleep schedule had become more conscious orientated than temporal for the last few weeks. But Adora didn’t mind. She hardly slept anyway.

She waits for Catra’s eyes to adjust to the light and focus on her face, heart aching and pulsing as she watches Catra’s face nuzzle out from beneath the blankets and rake in a full expansive breath. She’s pale and her forehead is clammy with a light sheen of sweat. She’d been keeping things down for the past couple of days now but Adora worried over the lost time they had to catch up on. Too many days spent imploring a hurting and delirious Catra to just cooperate and try to swallow something solid. And then holding her close and tight as she threw it back up and wiping up the wasted food afterwards.

Catra hums around the discomfort and shuffles a little under the covers. "I got breakfast." Adora says as she shuffles closer and onto the mattress so she’s hovering closeby.

"mm…" Catra squeezes her eyes shut before whispering on a waning note. "Better not be beans again…" Adora smirks at that. Weary eyed and exhales the laughter through her nose in one tired breeze. Things were better now. She didn’t have to think about those early days. Catra was here.

"What do you have against beans?" She questions as she helps sidle Catra up onto the pillow and lean her easy up against the wall with two hands. It’s a long and laborious process that takes a lot of compromise and careful planning. Shuffling blankets and reorienting wayward non cooperative limbs. By the time they’ve got her all set up Catra’s huffing and humming in the back of her throat to exhale the pain. Beads of sweat budding on her forehead as she pants open mouthed and head tilted up to the sky.

Her chest puffs and rises three times before she bemoans sarcastically. "Everything.." Her brow sinches tight and drawn in between her eyes.

Adora’s smile doesn’t come to full bloom but her lips relax as she swipes her thumb across the crease and salt water on Catra’s forehead, easing it away and massaging out the worry lines.

"Well, they love you." She says low and bemused, already turning back with tin in hand.

"Ugh…would it kill you to bring back some canned peaches for once in your life?"

"I’ll make a note next time I run to the grocery." She says as she grasps the spoon to shovel a generous helping from the can onto the plastic utensil. She rises ever so slightly back onto her feet so she can fold her legs and sit cross legged on the mattress and lean in close.

To her credit Catra doesn’t make much of a fuss. Just takes it and chews without worrying the textureless mush in her mouth for too long and swallowing.

They sit there together in the light of the lantern, flame flickering and splattered against the walls as Adora spoon feeds what she can to Catra, occasionally pausing to offer a few precious sips of water from the canister of purified snow water. They’re only halfway through when Catra throws a heavy laden limb up to block Adora’s next spoonful, hand limp on her wrist and thumb just brushing on the blue branching pulse when she speaks "you take the rest."

Adora’s hand burns from the heat of Catra’s hand, clamped loose around her wrist. They hang there together for a beat too long, suspended in open air like floating dust particles. Locked together when Adora stares at their connection. She works her tongue in her mouth and loosens her jaw. "Already ate." She reasons.

"Adora," Catra’s eye just catches hers and Adora plays her cards right by leaning in and squeezing Catra’s hand as tight as she dares. "Promise." And she speaks it easy and fluid knowing full well it wasn’t a pure bred lie.

She doesn’t know whether or not Catra really buys it or not but it hardly matters. Not as long as Catra takes the next spoonful without protest and keeps it down.

Before long the tin goes empty and Adora’s scraping the sides bone dry for one last bite. "Thanks." Is all Catra says when it’s all said and done and they’re cupboard bare again. And all Adora can do is smile around the weary lines.

"You’re welcome."

The next few moments are spent easing Catra back down and under the covers once Adora’s satisfied that the dressings don’t need to be changed again. She gets Catra buried under layers of covers and leans crooked back over as she rubs her hand on Catra’s shoulder, peering down and asking with her eyes if there was anything else she needed. More blankets? Some better socks? She didn’t have any new ones but she could take her own and layer them over Catra’s to ward off frostbite.

Catra’s eyes squeeze shut again as she adjusts and exhales one languid sickly breath. "Had a dream last night." She mumbles. But she’s not fading into sleep and Adora hovers nearby to soak it in.

"What about?" She places the tin on the floor between her crossed legs and crooks her spine against the imaginary ramrod it’s been lashed to all day. Unwinding and curling under the bruising pressure.

Catra’s laid out flat on her back, rocked ever so slightly on her good side for practicality. Mismatching eyes peering up at the ceiling above glassy and contemplative.

"The H.O.R.D.E." She offers flatly. Quietly in the din of emptiness.

Adora doesn’t go tense. She doesn’t. She’s too old to be afraid of childhood monsters anymore. She’s outgrown them. But the muscle in her cheek twitches marginally as Catra grasps and and brings them both falling into old discarded memories like deep churning river water. The past never likes to stay in the past does it?

Adora mulls over her next words carefully before whispering in the low glow. "Sounds more like a nightmare."

…

"Pro’ably was but…I dunno, it was before we got conscripted." Catra doesn’t look at her as she speaks. Just keeps her gaze locked and hinged some pinpoint on the ceiling. Her eyes shining reflectively in the light.

Adora snorted a tired laugh. "Still sounds like a nightmare." She pulls her leg from underneath her and props her knee, rubbing out the tingling muscles so the blood flows down to her buzzing foot. She presses her face into the fabric of her shoulder as she listens to Catra hum in acknowledgement.

"But you know what I mean right?" Her eyes flicker and Adore presses her nose into her coat sleeve. Listening intently to the crackle of the log splintering in the stove behind her. ‘It-…it wasn’t all bad growing up in the H.O.R.D.E was it? You still have…_some_ happy memories right?’Given the angle Adora’s rested at she can’t really see Catra’s expression with the way the shadows lie and set, pooling into all the dips and valleys in the lantern light that bathes and paints them soft and glowing despite the harsh cut of dark. 

Adora gazes down at her hands and lifts one up in the dim and watches as everything seems to shift and hinge on each movement of light and jagged shadow line connected in motion. Closes it. Opens it. And watches as the geometry and physics of light and dark bend and fall into place around them as she leans forward on her knee and plays with the fraying blanket threads close to Catra’s face. Her breath puffs around her knuckles when she answers. "Of course I do."

"But."

"But…" Adora weighs the words carefully, tired and weather beaten as she was she tried to catch and phrase exactly what she meant so Catra could understand. "They weren’t _fixing_ things. They were making it all worse-and I_ know_…" She pins Catra’s counter before she can give it breath. "I know what you think about the Fireflies. And…regardless, of how much of what you think is true…"

Adora doesn’t know when Catra had turned her face against the pillow to look up at Adora. Her eyes glistening shiny and bright as she listens. "They weren’t hurting people. Not like the H.O.R.D.E…" nail ragged in. "I couldn’t-I…"

…

"…I couldn’t."

…

Catra’s voice, for once, isn’t snide when she replies. "Yeah…you always were the heroic type."

Stock still under the sheets as she speaks.

"Makes sense you wanted to be with the Fireflies."

Adora feels her shoulders droop under the weight of it all. "That’s not…"

Adora doesn't know what she means to say. Deny it? She was the one who left. In the middle of the night no less. Granted it's not like the H.O.R.D.E would've just let her walk out the front doors and quit cold turkey just like that but still...it had felt more like a personal choice than it should have. Less to avoid punishment by execution and more of a way to way lay the inevitable conversation she'd have to have with Catra. No better than on that godamn roof...no better than right now. And-and it's not like she wouldn't do it again. Or that she even regrets it - that she would wish Light Hope had never found her that day in Downton and the lines of Mara's face in her facial structure, the pull of her shoulders, the cut of her frame. So then...then what?

"…It was never about what I _wanted_, Catra."

There’s silence for a long moment then. But it wasn’t…tense. Wasn’t laden with too much said or unsaid. Didn’t leave them ravaged and sour. Broken bone and hearts bleeding out on the ground to rot. It was just them now. Tic for tac. Adora sardonically suspects it’s wholly due to the pair of them being too tired to really give a fuck anymore. But it still felt nice.

The fire crackles.

…

"Hey…get under here. S’freezing."

Adora pauses and works her mouth around the dryness. "I should fletch the arrows. I have to go out hunting tomorrow."

"T’can wait." Catra breathes. And Adora falters. Squatted bent knee on the ground, half on the mattress, half on her own feet. Stuck in indecisive limbo.

Catra helps out and decides for her when she reaches up and pulls Adora in by the elbow. Gently tugging with insistence as she pulls her into gravitation. Underneath the blankets. Underneath the warmth and covers and wool where it’s not…soft. Per say. But tender in a way that makes her joints and chest ache and throat swell.

She’s on her side. Catra still situated flat on her back but she can feel her head scratch and rub against the lumpy pillow to face her. Gradually, her eyes adjust to the shadows so she can finally make out the lines of her face. Tired and weary and soft in all the places that pool and shadow heavy with fatigue. She looks the way Adora feels. Adora breathes it in like incense. "Ten minutes tops…then I gotta go."

Catra snorts dry and unamused. Her cheek presses against the pillow in the dark "When was the last time you actually slept?"

"Jeez Catra, since when were you my life coach?"

…

"Heh…Sorry. I’m…I’m not trying to make light of things."

The tuck of Catra’s lips doesn’t unfold and she chews at her lip before speaking again. "You’ve been going out further." An unspoken accusation. But it doesn’t have much bite to it. Adora’s eyes settle on Catra’s which are pointedly dissatisfied.

"So have the animals."

"Adora- "

"Catra, it’s fine. Trust me, it’s worth the risk."

At that Catra scoffs. "Like the medicine?"

Adora’s fingers ever so slightly dig into the pillow underneath her and her knees subconsciously curl in a little as if to defend her from Catra’s quick wit.

"I’m not an idiot, Adora. I know you didn’t just happen to find _antibiotics_ lying around in a fucking pharmacy. Seriously, this is the kind of shit that- "

"Catra- "

_"What.?"_

Catra’s eyes blaze with a flickering annoyance Adora thought she would never have missed. It’s leering and biting and aggressive and just on the far side of cruel but…Adora finds herself unable to look away. She wants to tell her. Wants to find a way to let her know how much she missed that conflictive glare without actually _telling _her and just have Catra - _know. Know _how much Adora’s missed her these last few weeks and how unashamedly _happy _she is that she doesn’t have to anymore. So she raises the blue cold hand that her cheeks is resting on and places it on the top of Catra’s ear, her fingers squeezing and running through the wild brown hair frizzling out there. She doesn’t watch for Catra’s reaction. Just looks at her fingers, playing with a single lock and speaks when Catra’s settled enough to listen. ’It’s worth the risk.’

A moment of silence while Adora listens to Catra finally push the breath she’d been holding in out her chest.

"…sap."

Adora smirks and digs her fingers in slowly to rub at the roots of Catra’s scalp. "You love it."

The fire hasn’t died yet. It’s still burning at the embers and dead wood as it crackles quietly in the emptiness of the basement. Adora thinks she’ll put it out later. Another hour to let it burn and glow wouldn’t hurt she thinks as the pulsing in her chest moves up to her neck and threatens to choke her.

"What happened in your dream?" Adora’s hand withdraws and she watches as she brings it down across the straining slope of Catra’s neck, then her shoulder, where she runs her thumb in small circles on the fabric.

Catra laughs. Honest and true and ringing in Adora’s ears even as it subsides to small shuddering chuckles. "Octavia’s glass eye fell into the mystery stew and you - haha! You ate it."

Adora smirks and finally looks back up to Catra’s eyes. They’re shining. "Disgusting."

__________

Adora is rucking on her jacket and stumbling out from the warm blankets that are pulling indignantly at her shoulders and legs. The cold of the basement air lancing through her bones and shocking her into wakefulness as she trips her way frantically to the basement window. The glass radiates frigid cold onto Adora’s hands as she rubs her sleeve on the glass to clear her view into the outside world, the heat of the fire having fogged it over night. She knew she should have put it out.

When she can finally see out the thick panes Adora’s hear sinks.

4…5…9? She couldn’t count them all. They were like termites in the woodwork. Filing in and out of the empty hollow shell houses littering the street outside. Guns cocked and loaded as they systematically storm and search house by house by house.

Adora pulls away from the window and curses under her breath. Bracing against the pulsing of a pressing anxiety that pulses around her head when she clenches her eyes shut and breathes rapid and panicked. They must’ve tracked her. Followed her after a hunt. Seen the smoke from the fire. This is all her fault. She wrenches her eyes open and glances out the window again, watching the legs and feet shuffle in the snow idly before she jerks back and grabs her pack and bow. Shoving her feet into her fraying boots and cursing herself as her fingers shake and shudder when she’s lacing them up. She’d lead them around the river. Lose them in the woods and set Swifty free into the wild for them to tail back to Sea Hawk and Mermista. Adora would have to make the trek back but…she could make it. She had to make it.

"Adora…?" _Fuck._

Adora jerks back just as she’s halfway out the basement door. Shouldering the quiver and knuckle white on the handle of the bow as she turns to see Catra - mussy bed head and already trying to sit up against the strain of her abdomen. The blankets pooling at her hips as she struggles upwards. "Catra! I- "

"Make sure to turn them inside out. Weaver wants results and I know you don’t want to answer to her." _Fuck._

Catra’s eyes widen and she turns her face to the window. Mouth agape in shock. "Fuck- " Adora’s already on top of her shoving a pale palm over Catra’s mouth to silence her. Keep her quiet as the boots outside shuffle dangerously close. Catra’s eyes are wide and wild as she stares into Adora’s. "Catra. Listen to me."

The legs outside are already moving towards the front of the house.

"Listen to me. I’m going to lead them away from here." Her whispers are hushed and rapid.

Catra’s voice strains and presses frantically against the surface of Adora’s palm. The heat of Catra’s mouth puffing at her hand in the cold, her shoulders rising and going stiff as she pushes forward and takes Adora by the sides of her arms with both hands. Adora squeezes back firmly in a way that gets Catra’s attention.

"Listen. Listen. Listen to me. You’re in no condition to run and there are too many of them to hold out against."

Catra’s head rears back violently and away from Adora’s hand, already turning back in hot violent stubbornness. "You’re _fucking _insane if you think for one second that I’m just gonna sit here - "

** _BANG!_ **

She’s interrupted by the angry banging on the front door. Ramming it open and readying to storm in any second.

"No time to argue." Adora doesn’t think about it when she brings her hands to the back of Catra’s head and presses their foreheads together. Adora’s eyes squeezed shut as she feels Catra’s clouding breath puff across her cheeks. She doesn’t want to think. "I’ll be back tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest." And she’s rising. Pulling up and away as Catra pulls in vain at her jacket shoulders. But she’s still weary limbed and aching and no match for the pry of Adora’s hands which unhinge the hooks in her jacket.

"Adora! No! Wait!- " Adora shuts the door behind her and shoulders a heavy set column of boxes in front of the door for good measure. Resting the flat of her hand against the wooden surface, a feeble heat bleeding out from the wood into her palm where Catra’s mouth had pressed into.

** _BANG!_ **

And Adora’s gone. Out into the cold and mounting Swifty as she fires a loud and screaming shot into the open air before she sets off into the white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this chapter was supposed to be a lot longer and hurt a lot more than this. But after season 4 and general laziness...I figure give these guys the soft moment they deserve. 
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	8. Winter III (Adora/Catra)

She wakes up in a cell. Or at least…something _like _a cell. It’s more of like a holding pen to be honest. Chain link lotting off a small lonely section of the kitchen they’d thrown her in. Cement blocks and thick 5 inch glass panes blockading her into a stifling suffocating corner. Adora gives the chained door an experimental shove and pull, the links clinking together and keening as she paws at the metal. The door holds true and sturdy against the chains and padlock so she doesn’t waste energy she doesn’t have and leans into the links. Fingers interlocking into the metal weave as she rests her head on the diamond pattern. A shiver trembled through her ribs and jerked her body in waves. _God it was fucking cold._

Her sides scream in protest. Deep set bone ache tearing up at muscles with each expansive breath in. Her purpling ribs having been crushed by the brunt of the fall. They’d shot at her - shot at Swifty actually. For whatever reason, they must’ve wanted to keep her alive. And so they’d shot at his legs…

Adora shuts her eyes against it. Bears her teeth and seethes in the crosshair of frustration and self pity that only makes her angrier. A burning embarrassment heating up her face as she rubs furiously at her eyes. She thinks of Catra. Snot and spit already drying on the edge of her chin as she imagines what Catra will think when she’s not back tonight. When she’s not back. Her body hadn’t healed fully but they’d talked about letting her start walking on her own. She was on the mend and getting stronger. And Catra was already strong. Strong backed and strong hearted. Willful and stubborn for survival in a way Adora doesn’t think she ever was. Adora relaxes incrementally, her shoulders easing back down away from her ears as she reasons Catra wouldn’t have much problem getting back to the township. With or without a horse, she’d be able to make it back when she was well again and the hunters were off her trail. Catra would be fine. She’d be safe and taken care of. Adora thinks about that as she peers across the chain fence and at the diced up corpse on the chopping block - dismembered forearms lying complacent on the tile floor. A butchering knife lodged firmly into the back of…someone’s back.

She takes the edge of her sleeve and bites into the fabric to still her stirring emotions. Shouldn’t waste the water.

__________

Adora feels a pit open and fall underneath somewhere in her stomach. Somewhere deep down in her gut at the pit of all that she is there's a vibration of static energy as the darkness shifts and slithers in like a snake. Hackles raised and tight as the treading of the woman's boots sound against the chilled tiles.

Adora simmers and growls like the caged animal she is, eyes trained into the dark.

She comes to a halt just out in front of her cell. The clip and hood of her coat now lax at her shoulders so that the strands of her hair curtain down around like a veil. Black and inky so that she blends into the background of the poorly lighted atmosphere that they're both swimming in. Her feet come just short of the threshold of light that cuts down into the freezer block from the basement windows, and she stands there solid and stoic for a moment while she stares down from outside. Contemplative.

Adora looks down and can see the small thin tray clasped loose and easy between her gloved hands.

“How are you feeling?”

Adora screws her mouth shut. Shuffles to a side stance and shifts from foot to foot on the keel of her heels. She doesn't know where to go from here. And that's left too much nervous energy to push her muscles to an aching unease. She doesn't know what to say.

"Super.” She settles on, cut and dry. 

Adora's got her haunches bunched up and the skin under her clothes prickles. And everything's just one step too fuzzy. One hair width removed from reality and offset against the world that she's standing in. And - Adora can't explain it but she feels like she's watching a movie. Silent black and white screenings playing against the blank of sheet tarp like they did back at the township...

“Here. You should eat.”

The woman gently slides the metal tray, along with a small tin of water underneath the slit in the door. It's a meager helping. No bigger or sustaining than her rations back at the H.O.R.D.E. But instead of standard MRE’S and ration bars, a small helping of simmering meat.

...

“I know you’re hungry. You’ve been unconscious for quite some time.” Close up. Adora can see the ravaged pink scar tissue poking out from behind the double canistered gas mask. Splotched and uneven.

Burns.

Adora's stomach does a funny little summersault at the scent. Mouth gone a little watery and tingly as she gazes down to the floor and her feet where the food invites her. But her eyes are iron and bar when lets her eyes trail back up. “What Is it.”

It’s not…embarrassment, or shame that she can taste. Not really. It’s much more bitter. Much more cut and dry when she speaks. But what she can see deceives her. An elder woman. No younger or older than Light Hope. No more or less tender, or colder than Light Hope. Even still, she leers into the depths as if she could see the danger. “Deer.”

But there’s something more terrifying and evil when she can’t see the snake coiled in it’s den poised to strike.

“With some human helping on the side?”

When the depths are depthless.

“I can assure you. It’s deer.”

Her stomach is twisting around in on itself. The void having eaten through her hunger twice over and left her body hollow over the winter nights. And from what Adora remembers of the H.O.R.D.E’s survival training…it looks like venison.

“You’re an animal.” Adora spits before dropping to her bruising knees and shoveling a handful of meat into her begging mouth. The taste. She doesn’t stop to taste. Doesn’t want to give into the satisfaction and bribery and weak will of it all as the snake leers over and above her. The taste…salt and savor. Another handful as her fingers nick against her own teeth as she presses what she can dig without utensils. Dirt and ash ridden nail beds that make her tongue read earthy iron.

“You’re rather quick to judgement.” Says the snake as it slithers ever so closer to her cage. “Considering you and your friend killed how many of our men at the University?”

Around the meat ripping apart by her canines and molars, Adora growls remembering the bullet that had ripped across her shoulder. Remembering the barb that had speared clean through Catra’s gut. “You didn’t give us much of a choice.”

“And you think we have a choice.” At the skirting edge of her peripheral she can see the descent of the elder woman’s form. The mask reverberating a rhythmic baritone in time with each breath and word drawn out crisp and chilling with it’s gentleness. “You kill to survive. Just as us…We need to take care of our own, by any means necessary.”

Adora swallows and lets the dredge down into her aching stomach that shamefully howls for more. But she’s still in control. “So what? You gonna chop me into tiny pieces?” Or something like it.

“I’d rather not. Please tell me your name.”

…

“You’re so full of shit.” Adora channels as much of Catra’s tinder and fire to light her soul as she gives the tray a heated shove to force it underneath the narrow slit in the door. The tin and metal clanking loudly against the floor as it spills and skitters across the tiles.

“On the contrary. I’ve been quite honest with you.” Picks and tidies up the mess of Adora’s spite. “Now I think it’s your turn. It’s the only way I’m going to convince the others.”

She can’t bring coherence or clarity to the the ball of lead in her gut. Iron tangy rot rust broiling inside like bone deep anxiety and adrenaline. “Convince them of what.”

“That you’re different.” She concedes as she slithers closer to the fence separating them. Figure almost pressing up against the barrier as she stands in the shadow of the metal lock weave. “That you can come around. You’re strong.”

And then to place a bare palm atop Adora’s hand, across the knuckles, and fingers and skin between the metal and bar. “And you’re special.”

…

“…oh” Gentle and timid. Like the eyes she trains and coaxes into gentleness. As she places one blue soft palm across the knuckles and finger encasing her in warmth.

** _Crack!_ **

Wrench back the dog leg against the angle like a lever. It snaps like a hollow bone wing. _“GAH! RGH!” Hold on. Hold on to the wretched twisted dangling thing already bruising and breaking in her fist as she reaches. Reaches reaches reaches. The keys!_

_“AGH!AH! GARAH!” _The metal gate protests as Adora is pulled flush against the links. Repeatedly thrust and pulled into the tearing teeth of metal. Ears ringing and world spinning for each arm wrenching pull until she’s shoved down to the floor. Dizzy and sick to her empty stomach. _God it’s cold. __On the floor…at this angle…she can see her breath puff and steam out like vapor against the slant of the world._

“You stupid little girl!” It’s a thrumming deep shout that radiates and strikes more fear than she’s willing to admit. Mask muffling and seething for each raking gasp of pain that distorts, changes into something spine splintering and alien as they pull in and out the industrial grade like nails across flesh. “What am I supposed to tell the others now!” She hisses through clenched teeth hunched over and bow backed licking her wounds.

“Adora.”

She croons around the hurt throbbing in her temples and arm. In her whole body as she cradles what she can crooked and bent over her knees on the ground. She feels as if her arms been popped out the socket. Dislocated and disjointed in all the wrong angles and pulled apart by the tearing muscle. So she grits and seethes the the truth and pain as pathetically as it sounds to her ears in the echo of her empty cage.

“Tell them…Adora…is the little girl…” She spits a thick resentful gob or rosy red the direction of her feet. The spray of red spittle painting the floor like vibrant flower petals. “That broke your fucking finger!”

…

“How did you put it? Tiny pieces?”

Adora’s eyes never trail away from the challenge. Never stray from the sharp and sting that’s pulsing all around her face and burning in through emerald eyes. But she hears the shadow of a voice echoing outside as she breathes as best she can through her open gaping mouth. “Weaver. Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to play with your food.”

Emerald eyes. Like acid and poison and toxic toxic vile.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Adora.” She can feel it now - if not see it. The danger, lurching to life underneath the water. She can feel the surge of it through the body and echo of the thick waters. Deep down somewhere hidden amongst the rocks and reefs. The blood trail drips down the cleft underneath her nose, drops and bleeds into the seams of her lips where she can taste the tang.

Her stomach curls unnaturally as she burns her gaze through the ceiling encasing her in it’s prison, the back of her head braising up against the unforgiving wall as she presses back into heated humiliation, pale blue winter light shafting in across the empty space she swims in and amidst throbbing consciousness. They hadn’t even left her a bucket for her to shit in.

…

….

_She’s cold…_

__________

_"What do you want?"_

_She doesn’t say anything at first, but Catra can feel atmosphere of her presence hover behind her. Lingering. Unnerving. Mostly annoying…"Adora left a week ago," she comments._

_Catra’s hands go white knuckled on the rail. "Congratulations." She growls "You’re a fucking genius." She jerks her head to the side so she can peer over her shoulder, a golden flash of flint in the dark. "Sea Hawk will be so proud."_

_Mermista doesn’t take the bait. Just stands there, arms folded and standing in the doorway sneering vaguely. Fuck her. What did she know._

_"Winter isn’t far off now," she says._

_…_

_"Snow’ll make it harder to trek anywhere. - "_

_"And I give a fuck because?"_

_"Just thought you’d like to know so you can start moving your ass to catch up with her."_

_Catra’s hackles rise sharply and her eyes are sharp enough to cut steel. "She left."_

_"Uh, yeah. Hence you should catch up with her.’’ Mermista doesn’t move from the doorway but she sways a little further onto the railing by shifting her body weight. Hip jutted out slightly forward. Catra looks away and screws her mouth shut. She’s done with this. Done with all this shit and that included Mermista’s holier than thou attitude._

_There’s silence, for a moment before Mermista pipes up. "So you want a horse or what?"_

_"What the fuck is your problem?"_

_"My problem." Mermista snarls tiredly. "Is that Adora is probably already 100 fucking miles west of here by now and you’re still sitting here stewing on my godamn wall." They’re pretty high up. She can overlook the whole township from up here, lighted houses, the shell of the mess hall jutting out above the neighborhood. Soft and lingering sounds of happy voices and laughter, people talking about their day drift up to Catra’s ears like a pleasant murmuring rain. And on the other side…darkness. Stark and cutting lines of pine trees that fall into each other and blacken the horizon. That’s where Adora’d gone. Not for the first time Catra wonders if she’d taken up wall duty just to wait to see if she’d come walking out from the treeline - bloodied and bruised. But whole. Alive…_

_"She’s not my problem anymore." Catra growls, the familiar anger fueling her fire._

_"Kind of feels like the other way around honestly," Mermista grumbles._

_"You know what? Fuck you."_

_"Excuse me."_

_"Fuck. You. You never liked me or wanted me here to begin with and this is just your fucking way of telling me to fuck off."_

_"I don’t hate you." She’d heard that before. "And I like Adora, ok?" She’d heard that before too. "And she’s alone in a fucking wasteland getting herself into God knows what kind of trouble without any backup. And forgive me if I think it’s pretty shitty that her partner stayed behind so she can play house."_

_Her heart spikes a little. She’s not sure with what. "If you’re so keen on her why don’t you hop on one of your little ponies and go after her? Huh?" There’s a sting in her eyes. She blinks it away._

_"I can’t."_

_She snorts with as much snark as possible. "Well neither can I."_

_"I have responsibilities here."_

_"And I have them to myself!" Catra jumps off the rail and rounds on Mermista who, to her credit doesn’t back down. "You Fireflies running around all the time! Fucking uprooting everyone’s lives and plans left and right like all of this is a fucking game. A game! Well it’s not! It’s my fucking life!" She’s bares her fangs at the injustice of it all "- and it may not mean shit to you but I’m not just gonna stand here and let you judge and call me a child when I, am the only one here, who seems to grasp the gravity of this godamn situation. The Fireflies are dead! Scorpia is dead! Bow and Glimmer are dead! Everyone - everyone! They all fucking die out there and if she hasn’t learned that by now well then - " If she’s quiet enough she can hear her fucking heart rip. "Then what was the fucking point?"_

_Mermista just stares at her. Gazing down impartially._

_"I did…" Catra deflates under the weight of it. "I did some horrible things…in Boston. Out there. To survive to - …to protect us. And - " Breathe. "It disgusted her." Catra looks away. "It never mattered. Even if I never - " Breathe._

_"I never wanted to hurt anyone."_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_"Me either."_

_Catra glances up to find Mermista overlooking the township. Orange lights glancing off the side of her face, her back rested against the rail._

_"Her name was Frosta." There’s a faraway look in her eyes, glazed and shiny so that Catra knows she’s infringing on some intimate moment. "…She tried to stop us when Sea Hawk and I were leaving - a real hard ass you know? Always a stickler for the rules…" Her lip curls up a little in a smile before unwinding back down. "No one ever wants to do bad things. But we do if it’s the right thing to do…Adora was always different like that."_

_Catra’s eyes scrunch up at that and the two of them soak in the silence on top of the bordering wall._

_Mermista takes a breath. "But it’s not her fault she’s like that." She nods as if Adora were standing right there next to them. "I really don’ t think she could help it if she tried." Mermista chuckles a little and Catra’s head sinks between her shoulders with her elbows propped up on the bar. Pine trees swaying to and fro in the shadows. "But - she doesn’t hate you either. She understands. She doesn’t like it,’ another chuckle, tired and weary, ‘but she understands……Look -…" Mermista sighs at her loss of words, tight lipped and mellow eyed. She almost looks familiar. "Adora made as much of a choice as she could with what she had. And…"Like she’d played this scene before._

_"…you’ve done worse for her."_

_Silence._

_"Just think about it." She pauses a beat and kicks off the rail to depart and Catra’s head sinks just a little bit lower._

_…_

_You do things you never thought you would for the people you love_

_…_

_"It isn’t like that," she blurts out just as Mermista lowers her foot onto the first step. "It isn’t…we aren’t - partners." Catra swallows thickly. Her head angles so she’s side facing Mermista’s upraised glance. And she doesn’t know why she feels as if she’s got anything left to defend. She doesn’t. But…"It isn’t like that."If her voice quivers she ignores it._

_But Mermista’s expression doesn’t waver. Doesn’t change when she turns away flippantly and snarks "maybe it could be if you’d stop flirting with my daughter." And - well fuck._

**.**

**..**

**….**

**…...**

Catra seethes through the clench of her teeth. Switches to exhaling out her nose so the puffs of air steam up and wither out into the fractal air. Each breath labored. Each intake a stab to her chest and radiating around her - blurry. She hunches over and grasps at the blooming dark red flower at her side - Adora’s carefully laced stitch work unravelling at the seams. Spoiling and painting the diligent and tightly bound bandaged canvas at her torso. Catra sneers so that her lip curls and her nose wrinkles.

"Let’s try this again…" The labor and effort in her voice is a low wracking and gritty sound. Like sandpaper and engine fires and something so deeply raw and vile that Catra’s never felt before. She sounds manic. She doesn’t care. Not when her knuckles are still tender and raw.

He’s young. Younger than her. Frailer than her. Blond tufting curls at his forehead that have been matted down with sweat and shiny glistening blood. His lip quivers uncontrollably and he squirms with the fear that’s possessed his limbs. Kicking out in futility trying to get away even while lashed tight and firm to the chair. Struggling futiley to get away, get away get away from the dark brooding animal that’s stalking and closing in for the kill. Claws unsheathed and knife fangs dripping saliva as she breathes in the scent of his fear.

Catra leans on her haunches. Setting her rock jaw straight and careening into his field of vision. Eyes trapping and pinning his gaze to hers. He squirms - whimpering all the while.

"The girl…" Catra sees red. "Where is she."

He whimpers. "I -…I don’t know no g- AHGH! GAH! HAGH! _HAGH!"_

She jams the switchblade deep into the crease of cartilage at a 90 angle. Deep and diving despite the considerable resistance she meets and holding it there for a good solid minute to let him soak in it.

"_HAGH! RGGGH!"_

"Come on. Right here. Focus." She shoves his shoulder back into the chair and holds him their while the vein at his neck strains as he stretches his neck back. Eyes clenched shut and teeth caged in at his mouth, bloody and stained. Her eyes never flinch from his distorting face and she waits until his static attention is trembling it’s way back to her. ‘Focus…’ He blinks through the tears. "Or I’ll pop your godamn knee off."

A whine bubbles out of his lips and his whole body jerks repeatedly against the bounds from the adrenaline and fear wreaking havoc on his limbs. Spit dribbling down his open mouth in a silent scream. But he doesn’t look away. Even as his eyes scrunch up and wrinkle into his pallid face.

"The girl…" Catra’s breath falters and she leans into the dark buzz clouding her vision. "Is she alive."

He swallows. "Sha- she’s alive! She’s Weaver’s newest pet. Listen I- "

Catra doesn’t flinch. "_Where!_" Like a screw.

"_GAHHH! RGHHHHAGH! PLEAZZZ!"_

She lets up only just and he jerks violently. Unhinged and rocking with the waves of it.

"_Tah- TOwn! Sh- She’sIN THe TOwnN.."_

Catra’s throat clenches tight. A town. Adora hadn’t mentioned a town. And with the way Catra had been bed ridden she wouldn’t know where to start. _Shk! _The knife slips out easy and Catra grasps his cheeks and squeezes in on the hollow so his jaw clicks open. She shoves the grip in between his teeth. "Here." She slaps her hand on the table and slides the map over. Unfolding and untwisting the surrounding area and holding it up in front of him so he can see. "Now you’re gonna mark it on the map. And it better be the same spot your buddy points to." Emphasizing each word with a glistening finger to his chest.

He wastes little time and cranes his neck forward to blot down a spot on the landscape. Head trembling and bobbing up in down with bubbling sobs pouring out his clenched lips. Catra snatches Adora’s blade back and closes the switch before shoving it in her front shirt pocket for safe keeping. She stands.

"Go - go verify it with Rog. He’ll tell you. I’m not a liar. I’m not." He breathes weary and strained. Hunched over a little as far as the ropes will let him. The bindings biting into his wrists and rubbing pink flaming rope burns into his skin.

Catra’s eyes are pinned and honed on the back of his matted golden curls while she trails behind him. Face expressionless and hard. Just going through the motions.

His neck snaps easy and quick under her arm and the dead weight falls motionless and stiff to the ground where she drops him. Trembling and shaking no more.

...

Catra eyes the body. It’s limp and formless now. Just a lump of meat and dirty rags. Eyes already clouding. The muscles in his cheeks already unwinding.

Young.

Younger than her.

Frailer than her.

"Fuck you…"

Catra turns.

"He told you what you wanted…"

Steps forward on the balls of her feet and takes a grip to the pipe, boots trailing a glistening red ribbon behind her. She stops in front of Rog so he can breathe in a sharp pained breath before jerking up to look at her with tears and fury seething at the brim of his eyes.

"I’m not telling you shit."

Catra knows better than to think of the world in terms of good and bad. Right and wrong. It’s because she knows better than Adora - she’s always known better than Adora. It was her job. In the H.O.R.D.E _and_ out here - _especially _out here. To keep a narrow mind without letting it stop her otherwise and stand in the way - some shaky place in betwen sane and crazy. It’s always been Catra’s job to know better about these sorts of things. Because if Catra left it up to Adora and her crusades they’d have both been dead long ago. Maybe there was some irony in that.

"That’s ok." It doesn’t really matter. Catra knows better than to let it.

Rog stares up at her, still sneering and red eyed as he sits limp and chained to a busted radiator.

"I believed him."

She makes it quick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shadow Weaver, Catra's getting ready to throw hands! Oh my god she has AirPods in, she can't hear us, oh my god.
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


	9. author's note

Finally fixed it!

Oh my god it has been a real sprint to the finish this with everything that's been going on lately, but I've finally managed to completely update everything and fix the mess I made of Summer, so please read that at your liesure! I am now back on track for winter part IV and for those of you who know the game you'll already know it's a doozy. Good news is I have a tone of sopht new scenes planned for Spring so suffer through it, I promise it get's better. 

I am slightly torn between finishing winter and working on a new project just beacuse the finale (!!!) has gotten me super inspired to work on something new and I want to catch the tail end of the hype if I can. So be on the look out for that in the meantime as well as the complete and extended version of Summer.

Big shout out to Kayazi for sending me parts of the old chapter that I accidentally deleted - you've saved my sleep schedule!

**Author's Note:**

> I did Scorpia a dirty bros
> 
> ...
> 
> So first chapter is up and running...I'm probably gonna wait and see how well it's received and if it goes well I'll throw up the rest of it. Please comment freely and constructively.


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